No Particular Trouble: A Destiny Story
by Rocketrow
Summary: A self-exiled Exo of the hunter discipline seeks answers to his pre-guardian life, getting more than he bargained for in the process. A fan fiction that runs parallel to the red war, drawing on lore established from the game, and speculated from its fans.
1. Chapter 1: The Facility

No Particular Trouble, A Destiny story.

Chapter 1

Castide-1 lay, lounging really, along the trunk of a long dead tree resting upon it's more living brethren. Leveled just high enough above a thicket that the mottled barrel of his rifle laced with netting and leavings of local plant-life blended well with the branches and detritus that made up his makeshift hide.

His left arm folded under the stock as his right hand traced the piece of warsat shrapnel lodged just above his right eye, a reminder that it's best to just waste the ammo rather than coax a hundred, screaming thrall into the path of sure damnation, just because you'd like to see it happen.

"Almost got it Cas…"

In an almost unnervingly quiet motion he adjusted his weight to roll and look down at his ghost, who spent the last five minutes cracking a memory core.

"And?" Castide said.

"Well, I'm positive it's not the crypt, cause that's on mars no doubt." She said, mostly to herself. "There is definitely something here. I saw something about secondary data centers being in this region, so it's not nothing, But…" She paused to emphasize "There are SEVEN different facilities within a ninety-mile radius that fit the description of what we found in the archives on Venus, and…"

Castide grunted as rolled back to peer through the scope of his rifle surveying the rows of buildings half a kilometer away.

She shot up to hover a foot behind him.

"And!..." she resumed. "Like I've been telling you, we should be on mars. We should be finding the crypt! It would have answers for you and hundreds of others…"

"Aggy please…" Cas interrupted.

Agama squared her shell towards her guardian, he never said _please_ , unless…

"what is it?" she asked

"Ketch, just over the next range, house of winter from the look of it." Cas moved back so she could move in to look through the scope

"Great" she grumbled as she hovered closer.

The ketch lay low in a ravine several yards from the buildings they were surveying. Almost unnoticeable if it wasn't for the dim glow of the servitors moving back and forth behind the trees.

"looks like that would be the main approach to the compound" Cas pointed towards the dimming lights.

"So, we go in there." Agama replied, gesturing towards the section of buildings not quite towards the south end.

Castide dropped from the tree landing with a barely audible thud next to where his sparrow lay. Strapping his rifle to the frame, he opened a saddle bag procuring two hand-cannons, securing one to his hip and one to the small of his back. The first gun was a typical Tex Mechanica build modified with a heavy muzzle break of his own design, limiting it's recoil so much it barely kicks harder than most of the sidearms most guardians carry as holdout weapons, and is such the odd guardian habit of naming their possessions, he named it "Third Ring". The second in which he never named but always referred to it as "The Bastard", not too dissimilar to his primary weapon, but forged for a larger caliber, and a peculiar barrel shroud that extended past the muzzle and forming a succinctly wicked looking bayonet. He immediately had Agama synthesize shotgun rounds from his ammo stiocks and adjusted the load order to slug-shot-slug, just in case things got a little too close.

It was a recent acquisition he found next to a dead ghost shortly after they landed in the Cascadian wastes, the ghost's guardian seemed to be missing, and upon Agama's scan of the dead ghost's memory, found that the guardian it belonged to, was a recent resurrection. Only a few months into his second life and now without a ghost, if he was still alive.

Castide pulled one remaining gun out of the saddlebag and fastened it to the straps on his armor so that it dangled close enough to use it when he needed, but not far enough to trip him up when he didn't. A suppressed SMG from one of the new foundries that popped up in his absence, and purchased during on one of his clandestine visits to the city.

" _Hake? Hawk? whatever." He thought._

He had a considerable pile of glimmer stashed in a safe house close to the outer wall of the city, and the gun's cost barely cut into it, he didn't need fancy, he just needed it to work.

He tested the action of the charging handle, slammed home a magazine and racked the weapon once more, finalizing the machine's readiness for lethality with an oddly satisfying _"SHLACK"._

"Guess we'll find out, won't we?" he mumbled to himself.

"I know you're not too fond of the transmat system, but maybe we can bring along something with some… well… ya know…" Agama cocked her shell at an angle "oomph" she expressed. Angling her body to the tube-shaped apparatus strapped to the front-left stabilizer.

Cas turned to look at her with one bright green eye tapping the side of the sheath strapped at an angle, handle down, positioned just so that that at a moment's decision, he can decide on bastard or blade.

"No need." He said as he resumed pulling out magazines and a secondary satchel.

"Fine, be that way." Agama sighed

She watched her guardian methodically ready the gear he needed. "Patchwork Exo" She overheard some in the tower call him, not to his face of course, nobody wanted that kind of attention from him since his days in the crucible. Other ghosts questioned her as to why she never fixed him, and the reply has always been the same, "that's how I found him."

Castide stood at 6 feet tall, even, no more, no less. Like most exos his body is at perfect proportions, all except for his face. His right eye was deep glowing green ocular module as seen in most of his kind, but the left was a sensory panel seamlessly integrated with the rest of his plasteel skull. An explosion from a warsat had blown off his right "horn" leaving in it's place a piece of the aforementioned warsat. He made her leave it in "for balance", since she failed to find said lost horn. His matte gunmetal "skin" with one blood red horn and mirrored wound with his mis-matched eye made for an intimidating visage. So much so that not even Cayde-6 was so cavalier towards him, but they haven't spoken him since Andal Brask was lost.

For years they have been in a sort of self-imposed exile from the city. Ever since finding a golden age manifest listing his designation in a particularly daring raid on a fallen outpost. Besides the occasional pit stops for ammo and news, they've been "on the range" ever since the vanguard decided not to back his investigation, only stopping into the city for supplies and company up until Andal Brask's death. "No reason to visit if I ain't got anyone to answer to." was Castide's final decision the matter.

Castide moved parallel along the tree line bordering the compound with barely a whisper as he passed foliage and fencing, as his footfalls came as snow on pillows. He stopped as he saw several intermittent flashes to his left. Infrared semaphore, Aggy found an entrance…

Cas darted out of the tree line straight to his waiting ghost, a black blur amongst the starlit background, coming to rest against the concrete structure and peering out around the corner as Agama wafted down just above his right shoulder.

"200 yards straight back, blown door, heads down, _they_ have been busy, but haven't found it yet." Agama's message flickered in the visor of his helmet. An odd trick they found for themselves after committing themselves to a mantra after too many unwelcome surprises. "No sound is the best sound."

Agama transmatted into a mesh netted satchel on his shoulder as Castide leaped to the roof of the building where they met. Moving fast and low he sped to the adjacent side of the rampart he was using to conceal himself. Only stopping and breaking silhouette to track the dregs and servitors ransacking the topside buildings near the approach to the ketch.

He peered over the deteriorated building's façade and scanned his surroundings for his secondary target, a fallen terminal, just to see what it was they were looking for, found, or if they beat him to his prize.

There! Next to an ether resupply tank and… "oh shit." He rattled out barely audible.

"What's oh…" Agama pipped onto his visor as she materialized low next to him "Shit." She finished out loud.

"Tekris" they grumbled almost in unison.

Tekris the Baron towered over the scurrying dregs, calmly surveying this outpost they found. Almost by sheer luck, or bad luck, they broke jump coming down directly on top of the old bastion. In her upper most arms she cradled a 3-barreled line rifle, her own design, while her lower right arm crossed against her torso where she would absently caress the hilt of her shock-blade. Or if irritated she would tap the metallic cap covering her docked left lower arm, as she was doing now.

There is no kell on her ship just Taksis and Vikram, two captains loyal to her, and their Archon Grigis. Far to old and demented to be any real form of leadership. But if there was it'd be her, the archon just muses away his time with his pilot playing hatchling games. If it wasn't for his insistence to sack this place she would have moved on, this place made her ether sour, and now that she was here, stank of those ghouls, _She'lot_. If this turns out badly she would dock that old doddering fool herself.

Out of her peripheral she noticed movement and snapped up her rifle in the direction. Leaves swirling down for the top of the strange buildings. Growling as she turned away, the stump of her docked arm started to itch. " _DRADAH ABA!_ " she bellowed to the dregs moving too slowly for her taste. She does not like this place, turning her head towards the unexplored sectors where the leaves still fall. _"Di do tus."_ She hissed.

She does not like it at all.

Castide slowly lowered the hammers of his hand cannons back into place as Tekris stomped off towards a scattering group of dregs.

"If I needed to breathe…" he murmured "Then it would be a sigh of relief." Agama chimed in.

Castide raced down the corridor while Agama held steady above his head shining light down the tunnel ahead and on to every placard he stopped at.

Workstation theta…

Personnel offices…

Bathrooms…

Workstation gamma…

Maintenance… (caved in)

Sliding to a stop and whipping his suppressed SMG to aim down the way they came as shuddering groan echoed down from whence they came.

"this place is old Cas." Agama said as she tilted her light back and forth between two cracked concrete support pillars.

"I'm guessing early golden age, maybe even pre-golden age" she remarked as a few loose pieces clattered to the ground

"We're not here for that kind of history lesson Aggy. Just let me know if you feel something" He said as he turned to continue on

"I don't _feel_ things Cas, I detect, sense and scan. Ooh look! A magnetic data storage device." She prattled back.

"Hard drive." He said as he glanced at the discarded device laying on a desk in an alcove.

 _How did he know that? He's never seen on in all his time since Agama woke him up in that desert, so just how the hell did he know what that thing was?_

"That's what were here to find out." he answered himself aloud.

"Oooh! it's got various sound files! I really think you would like this Judas… what was that?" Agama asked, interrupted from her ramblings.

"nothing, just talking to myself" said Castide as he pulled himself away from his thoughts.

"No, THAT" she quipped as she flew closer to a door labeled maintenance with a still glowing keypad imbedded into the wall.

"There's still power here Cas, and I didn't notice until now. OH, TRAVELER'S CRACKS! Am I defective!? Cas! We need to go back to the city! I – I – I need to find another ghost t-t-to scan me and see if I'm…"

A loud bang and screech of metal on metal interrupted her as Castide kicked off the opposite wall to ram his shoulder into the door, knocking it off it's hinges and clattering down the catwalk steps it was guarding.

"You're fine Aggy." He consoled her as he lightly set his hand on the top of her shell.

"Now do you _feel_ it?" he asked as they moved through the opening.

"I don't need to, I can see it" she remarked as they looked down into the maintenance shaft they uncovered.

The entire room was lit up from all four corners from imbedded lights. The catwalk dizzyingly spiraled down for what seemed like an eternity, and the entire shaft was made up of a completely different construction than the corridor leading to it, and the compound above.

Castide stepped onto the catwalk as if testing its stability, and then deftly up onto the railing, balancing easily as if he were born on a tightrope.

"C'mon Aggy, let's make this quick." He said

"You can't smile, but I know you're smiling, and I… EEEEEEP! She yelped out, as he snatched her out of the air and stepped out into nothing.

The wind passing by them almost seemed to howl as they fell, even through the confines of Castide's denim Jacket he wore over his armor in which Agama was cradled. The catwalk seemed to morph into a hypnotic spiral as she feverishly scanned doors, openings and listings printed onto the walls as they fell. " _Ooh an armory"_ she thought to herself, as an odd sound seemed to phase into hearing. His cloak stretched up and flapping insanely above them seemed to be laughing. _His cloak is laughing?_ She thought. _No… no._ Her eye dimmed, and the top of her shell moved down to halve her eye in disdain. " _He's_ laughing" she sighed to herself.

A shimmer almost seemed to envelope the lower half of Castide's body as their descent slowed, blurring out details as its intensity climbed until completely vanishing as he stepped from the air to the ground with such ease, as if stepping off the catwalk stairs.

"You're no warlock, so best not to let any of them catch you using their tricks like that Cas." She mused as she extracted herself from her plasteel and denim nest to zip around the room.

"They wouldn't say anything, just grumble to each other about someone letting a hunter get at their textbooks." He retorted

"Still, who taught you that? Most warlocks don't talk to you, Andal and Cayde had enough reason to poke into their business, but only to the point where they could best point their noses to the largest pile of glimmer." She asked.

"Ikora." He returned while continuing down the overly large and seemingly brand new corridor.

"IKORA!? I thought she hated you?" she gasped.

"Rivalry ain't hate, no matter which way you spin it Aggy, and you got that right on Andal, but Cayde? Hah! Ya gotta be blind not to see what he's sweet on." He said.

Stopping to lean against the wall next to a access console.

Agama stopped inches from his visor. "Fine fine…, So. What do we do now in this dead end?"

Spinning to indicate the perfectly squared of ending to the corridor

Castide tilted his head and jerked his head towards the large door at the end of the corridor they were moving down.

"looks like a big ass door Aggy. Show me your moves girl."

Agama slowly rotated towards the large bunker door that at first glance looked exactly like the paneling that covered most of the sub structure, and tilted towards a console off to the left. "Always with the doors with you guys isn't it?" she asked as she seemingly deflated a little.

Agama wasn't your typical ghost, didn't quite have that coward streak that ran through most other guardian's ghosts. When she found Castide in the North American southwest dunes, a lone exiled dreg was attempting to exhume Castide's long oxidized corpse from a wrecked jump ship, she immediately recognized the Traveler's touch on that lifeless frame, and she acted. Speeding towards the unsuspecting eliksni, she transmatted a piece of scrap metal and quickly grafted it to the bottom quadrant of her shell, driving it deep into the neck of the hapless creature, all three twisting and falling to the sand. When she extricated her self from the shocked and dying form, she stared directly into the wretches' eyes through a haze of escaping ether and simply, coldly said. "Mine."

She has changed quite a bit since. Adopting vex armor plating on her shell, noticing it tends to deflect most energy based weapons, while keeping her frontier class pilot lights she grafted a couple of harpy sensor whips to the back of her shell. Manually manipulating things while you're

Interfaced has proven quite useful.

Oh, and you know she kept that jagged piece of steel from the day she found her guardian.

"Got it!" Agama exclaimed as the massive bunker gate shuddered to life.

Castide looked up from his task of honing the blade that was the muzzle end of the bastard.

"Well… lets see if this is the goose were looking for." He said while sliding his gun into the holster strapped to his back.

As they moved through the opening into a large octagonal room, banks of consoles, server racks, and monitors whined and flickered to life. Warning lights snapped on bordering two large gates on either end of the room, casting soft yellow light in a lazy spin across the track system running from one gate to the next.

In the center of the room an enormous construct that looked like a mechanized octopus crossed with a brain stem sat in a large carriage. Large cables and conduits stretching out from underneath it's large frame to rest in half-completed junction boxes clamped to the frame of the carriage.

"This isn't good." Castide said. Reaching to detach a satchel clipped to his harness.

"That's a warmind!" Agama exclaimed while careening around the room interfacing and scanning every console, monitor, and dusty data-pad in sight.

"And it's incomplete, nothing but infrastructure, just a shell with power relays, and connections. It seems to be in the middle of manufacturing, no memory cores, no logic drives…"

"What is this place Aggy?" Castide asked as he went to work adhering demolition charges to the warmind shell, and structural supports around the room.

"Warmind production facility "Agamemnon"." She responded.

"There's an archive access sixty yards down the assembly line southbound, opening the gates now." She added

Klaxons sounded, and the warning lights increased their tempo as the gates started to raise, and track sections rotated in to reconnect in the gates absence.

Castide turn to face the emergency exit in which they came, leveling his SMG to the empty corridor.

"Think our upstairs neighbors might complain about the noise?" He quipped while arming the detonator on his belt.

"Well it is past quiet hour, but I don't think they're the type to call the peace keepers." She shot back.

They met each others gaze for a split second, and they were off. Castide at a full sprint with Agama knifing through the air right at his side.

Tekris drank deep of her ether as she shouldered past Taksis ignoring his growl of protest, moving off the gangplank of the ketch towards the compound.

The servitors have grown agitated groaning, and braying while moving with haste around the buildings close to the enormous hatch blocking their access to whatever lies beneath this cursed place, looking for a way to activate it. Not even the constructor shanks have had much progress eating their way through the massive door.

She stood seething while watching their wasted efforts.

"False gods, all of them." She breathed out in disgust.

She turned to glare towards the ketch and started to move with the intent of finally fully docking her incompetent archon and removing his tainted pilot servitor and leaving them in this _"Goden di"_ wasteland. Then she heard it.

She turned her head towards the faint sound, back and towards the field of rusted bodies of ships belonging to ancient _she'lot_.

"Bring me my weapons! Call the shanks!" she barked at a nearby dreg.

She proceeded towards the small building emanating the sound as servitors began to congregate around her.

She stopped short of the entrance of the small sloped building, peering into the darkness. Too small for the servitors to enter.

"Send the shanks in." Taksis suggested. "There is nothing here, just a waste of time provoked by the old fool." He added.

Tekris snatched her rifle from the hands of the waiting dreg she sent to rally her crew.

"No. Check the other buildings and give me four vandals." She spat at him.

"Stay here and kill everything not of our banner. I know this stench and it will be my prize."

Four vandals came and grouped around her readying their shrapnel launchers and bearing their shock-blades. Tekris cradled her rifle in her one lower arm while she clambered down into the void. Her left lower arm had just started to grow back pushing against the metal cap protecting the old wound. She remembered the pride she felt as her kell removed the clamps from her lower arms, after she marched into his chamber to throw down the shattered pieces of a _she'lot's_ pet at his feet.

Draksis was dead now, scattering her house away from that garden world they fled to after breaking themselves against the _She'lot._ Grayliks had no sway over her, so she took her ketch and the ancient deposed archon to start her own house, her own banner. Now she remembered the shame of losing her arm to that one-eyed ghoul, she had the drop on him, it was sheer luck that she happened upon it.

The thing was just laying there watching some of its brethren in the distance attempt to open some _Lun_ stronghold. She readied her blade while bearing down the hapless thing when a sharp pain to the side of her head, blinded her and sent her reeling.

The damned _she'lot's_ pet had rammed her, yet the ghoul had barely moved still, when she redoubled her efforts it was almost too late.

She had not noticed the odd tube angled out beneath his arm, it spoke out fire before she had a chance to dodge completely.

The immediate loss of weight coupled with the searing pain unsteadied her for a moment, long enough to see the bastard turn to aim his weapon through the haze of ether spilling out of her broken mask, and she could smell him. The second shot caught her in the chest, forcing her back and off the embankment, causing her to lose her footing and tumble back towards a ravine. She howled every curse she ever knew as she fell, while he just stood there hold watching her fall.

She lay at the bottom of the ravine staring back up at that silhouette committing to memory the visage of that hateful being as he lifted her separated arm over her and let if fall from his fingertips as if it were nothing, and her vision faded centered on that one green eye.

Tekris opened her eyes from the memory in the pitch black of the corridor. The rage she felt compounding and welling inside her.

She roars down into the depths.

" _She'lot vi! Gu tosh, re ma! NE ASUKT KA CHU!"_

As her words rattled down the never-ending blackness she turned to one of her accompanying comrades.

"Bring the rest of the barons, and their regiments. And get that hatch open!"

The vandal screeched in accordance and ran back the way it came.

"This thing will not have the better of me again." She seethed out.

As she continued on, this time her massive footsteps fell lighter as she trudged down to the dim glow at the end of the corridor.


	2. Chapter 2: Contingency

No Particular Trouble, Chapter 2

Castide swung his weapon in a wide arc back and forth as he moved down the corridor, checking for any possible threats no matter how unlikely it seemed. They just cleared another large octagonal room containing yet another carriage holding another warmind, albeit far more skeletal than the first they discovered. The facility was far too clean, far more than any other golden age complexes they traipsed about in their years together till this point. No dust, no decay, no overgrowth of nature coming back to claims what was once hers, and oddly enough no…

"Bodies, Cas." Agama chirped, as they came to an alcove.

"There's always some at some point." Castide returned.

They stood before a large blown out door inset several feet into the wall of the hallway they were exploring. Scorch marks fanned out around the opening, a stark contrast against the pure white, almost too pristine walls that the lower level of the facility consisted of. Several frames lay scattered around the door all with that blackened pattern haloed around their forms, like some twisted seedlings left from the mother flower now gaping at them.

"Whaddya' think Aggy? Golden gun? Sunsinger?" He said as he knelt to prod the headcase of one of the frames.

"No sun-breaker has this precision, the door simply screams titan, but this…" He continued, gesturing to the wounds on the androids.

"Means the fallen weren't here first. So, whoever did this opened our way in." Agama finished for him.

"This was solar energy, or something incredibly like it. I have no records of any guardian operating out here with any substantial finds, so it's either one of Ikora's shadows, or a rouge guardian." She added.

"Get anything from them?" He asked.

"Nuh-uh, memory cores were the kill shot. Completely vaporized, even their weapons were either destroyed or taken."

"And this is our stop?" He asked as he gestured to the blackened room, only lit with the dull glow of a command prompt blinking on a single console.

"This is the only room listed 'Archive' in the schematics I've got." She answered.

"Lets see if anything is left." He said, as he stepped through the door.

Agama moved in front and above him to shed bright white light into the room they entered. Revealing massive data storage tanks, a single console with it's ever blinking command prompt, and a toppled chair.

"Guess they didn't like what they learned." She said.

She veered in closer to the console and briefly interface with a bank of data ports adjacent to the console.

"Well whoever was here first left it open for us, security has been bypassed, no firewalls, and all files unlocked… strange…" She mused. "Any specifics you want me to look for? Or…" she asked.

Castide threw his hood back and toggled the hermetic seal on his helmet, removing it.

"Keep an eye on that corridor, and find us an escape route. I can do this on my own, I hope." He said.

"Just sing out my name if you need a hand." She announced as she swooped on close to his face waggling her sensor whips in a mocking manner, then darting out of the room to survey their area.

Setting his helmet on the desk and kicking up the chair into its designed position. Sat down and rolled close to the console.

"Search. Castide, Roahn." He spoke to the console.

"Searching" a static voice echoed out of some unseen speakers.

Three files Blipped on screen, one manifest labeled "personal effects", two encrypted.

Castide reached out and tapped the manifest icon. The monitor blinked out and then back on displaying the information:

-Subject: 656/AD-

-Name: R. Castide-

-Inventory-

-1- Antique 45. Caliber sidearm (loaded)

-3- Magazines containing 45 caliber ammunition

-1- Novel "The Martian Chronicles" by R. Bradbury

-1- Metallic disk with green jewel (vibrating?)

-2- Blades 15.24cm in length

-1- Personal data pad (Non-functional)

-1- ERF Deployment jacket ==DESTROYED/BIOHAZARD==

-1- Set ERF Fatigues ==DEESTROYED/BIOHAZARD==

-1- Pair ERF Boots ==DESTROYED/BIOHAZARD==

-2- Pkg. Tobacco product ==DESTROYED/BIOHAZARD/CONTRABAND==

-END INVENTORY-

\- ITEMS INTERRED: MERIDIAN BAY, MARS. C/O CLOVIS BRAY—

Castide let out a long sigh. "When she's right…"

He keyed back to the first of the encrypted files, flexing his fingers and rolling his shoulders. Golden age encryption wasn't too much of a task when you know some of the tricks, and when you can butter up a cryptarch, you learn all the tricks.

"looks like I owe Kreth another drink." He mused to himself.

The file's lockout melted away after he punched in a few keys into the security algorithm. Revealing a badly damaged or corrupted video file.

Castide traced the warsat shrapnel imbedded in his skull, grunted, and punched the play icon.

 _Static?_ he thought until the audio kicked in.

"—raveller is on earth! Sec-com stated it left Io, but didn't get a chance to say where it was headed before comms gave out!" said a voice off screen.

The camera pans around to take in the scenery. Snow rolling down in rippling sheets and a blurred black figure clambering up an incline of rock and ice.

"Guess we found out." Said a closer voice. " _Must be the camera's operator, sounds familiar."_ Castide thought

"The warsats have gone haywire, Warminds across the system have grounded all off-world transit, I'm not of the mind to assume it's just because the cue-ball decided take a holiday." Called back the blurred figure.

"Skyshock alert placed it this area but I doubt we'd find anything in this… Holy…" said the camera operator as they crested the rise.

The video stuttered and blinked until it held the image of the traveler floating several kilometers above the valley they were above.

"WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! What's it doing!?" Said the companion. "looks like it's melting or seeding something!" he continued

The traveler seemed to be shedding billions of small bright orbs of light into the air around it, only to have their brilliance fade away as they came into contact of the valley floor, and others being cast off to parts unknown.

"Call it in. I'm heading down there to see if I can grab a sample of whatever those are and…" The camera operators sentence was cut short by a blaring rapid report of some unknown weapon cutting down the camera operator's companion. The camera panned in a wide arc, the operator searching for the origin of their comrade's death.

"Get down!" a third voice screamed.

A blur of blue glow and hard angles slammed into the camera as the sound of that weapon started up again, ending the feed of the video.

"Agama?" Castide asked out loud, pushing back from the console.

 _That was her voice!_ It's seared itself into his audio receptors. It almost burned behind his eyes.

 _That WAS her! But why. What was the traveler doing? That was my voice, right? It was far more organic but that was my voice, I think… Was that where the ghosts came from? Did I just see the traveler do what I think it did?_

Castide's head swam trying to make sense of all the questions he was asking himself. Every time he answered himself, a dozen more questions would rise in his psyche.

He stood with both hands on the console staring up into the towering memory cores of the archive in which he stood.

"The birth of the ghosts." he said the final answer out loud.

The buzzing in his head stopped.

"We've got trouble!" Agama called out as she careened back into the room. Shaking Castide from his shock.

"Captains, Vandals, and Dregs. They found a way in and they're headed right to us!" She exclaimed.

Castide stared directly into her eye for a split second and said nothing.

He grabbed his helmet pulling it over his head, snapping the seal closed.

Pulling up his weapon and toggling off the safety and racking the charging handle once, sending a single round flipping through the air.

Snatching the round out of the air and running his thumb over the tip of it.

"First things first." He said to himself sliding the round into his harness.

"Get those files and point me in a direction." He called to Agama.

He exited the room and stopped to cover the direction of their infiltration.

"Aye-aye!" She exclaimed. "Oh! And left… we should probably go left." She continued as she turned to interface with the console.

She sped out of the room to stop above his shoulder only too see two vandals stop at the end of the corridor, all eight eyes burning with malice, look towards them. They raised their upper arms and screamed in battle cry, while their lower arms, brandished weapons took aim.

Castide, with Agama safely in a satchel behind his right shoulder, started forward. The visor of his recently donned helmet reflecting the lazy glide of the Fallen's weapons discharges, the flashes of his own weapon's response, and the screaming escape of ether from his target's vital points. All of it streaming on like a distant memory in slow motion, all in a few scant seconds.

Castide reloaded and re-readied his SMG and sped off towards his failed killers before their bodies completed their collapse.

Tekris stood before the Incomplete warmind, mouth agape and arms spread wide. She moved around the hulk taking in her surroundings. Tekris and Vikram finally made their way down the winding shaft and entered the room, their regiments piling in after them.

Tekris looked to them. "Taksis, take half our force and continue the hunt." She said as she pointed towards the southern gate.

"Vikram, take some of your most trusted and find a way to open the great gate. Get that old fool and Tenkacks down here…" she said as she turned to look up at the hulking frame. "This is how our house will rise."

Taksis moved towards cavernous entrance to see five of his vandals scurry off towards their prey.

"Over-eager." He grumbled to himself. He turned to look towards his brood brother Vikram and grunted.

Vikram raised his head and eyed his brother. "Glory to you Taksis." He said as he turned to head back up the shaft.

Taksis watched his brother go before he turned to leave. Taksis and Vikram were brood twins docked together when of age, and un-clamped together by Grigis as they made their exodus from the House of Winter. Tekris shared her ether with them, allowed them to grow strong. Vikram always had an aptitude for the machines, but Taksis had the battle-lust. Tekris recognized this from early on from when they were dregs, to later as they were allowed to grow their arms, and always used them to their fullest capability. This was why they respected her, recognizing and using their talents instead of twisting and pitting them against each other as Grigis would do.

Taksis nodded towards Tekris as he turned to follow his compatriots.  
"I will be along shortly Taksis, do not forget, the ghoul is my prize. Corner it and kill it's pet if need be, but it will be MY prize." She said without taking her eyes from the warmind.

Taksis growled low in accordance and stalked into the corridor.

" _It will be her prize, but not before I dock it and shatter it's pet against my blades."_ He thought to himself.

He felt his ether seethe, and drank deep from it. If he could best this _she'lot_ , this beast that docked her. Then he will wipe that shame from her, he will call her Kell, Vikram will call her kell, and she will name them barons.

He bristled with pride at the thought of it, and quickened his gait. If he proved his strength, and his brother proved he could do what their servitors could not, she will acknowledge their strength to Grigis, cementing their place in the house. She will be made Kell, and when she is Kell, she may take him and his brother as brood-mates, and their progeny will be the strongest of all Eliksni. Proving themselves so early that they will never taste the docking blades. Their house, the House of never docked.

Taksis froze as he upon opening to the tunnel. It was quiet, far too quiet. No sounds of shrapnel launchers, no crackling of shock-blades save his own.

He moved forwards into the room stopping as something crunched under his massive foot.

As he looked down to see escaping ether leak out of one of his vandals under foot, a burst of fire lit up in his peripheral. Several rounds smacked into his shields harmlessly, while the rest flew into some of his dregs spraying ether, and shattering the shanks serving as his out-riders.

He spun and let loose a volley from his shrapnel launcher towards the fire. Teleporting away and into the cover of the great machine in front of him. Quickly taking in his surroundings he finally found the forward half of his force.

Dregs and vandals spread out across the room, lifeless, missing heads, limbs. Some scorched beyond recognition, some seemingly just… Broken. He looked up to see the corpse of a dreg dangling from the massive skeletal machine, spinning just enough to show Taksis the charred hole burrowed into the chest of the hapless thing.

Taksis felt something well up inside of him, something he never felt before. He roared and pushed whatever it was back into himself and stepped out weapons at the ready, when he finally saw what had wreaked such havoc to his group. A black and crimson streak slammed into one of his vandals tearing out the things throat out, then leaping to the top of the machines scaffolding, firing its weapon as it moved, downing three of his dregs, and using the vandal's body to block the return fire from its once comrades.

That unfamiliar feeling welling back into being.

Castide swung his smg back and stowing it away. " _Three mags left, good for the fodder, a solid purchase"._ He thought to himself

He pulled the Third Ring and The Bastard from their respective holsters and cocked both hammers back simultaneously. Kicking the body of the vandal he dragged up onto the incomplete warmind down to the bewildered captain's feet causing it to take a few steps back. The beast looked up at him and screamed firing it's shrapnel launcher recklessly at his direction.

Castide dodged left and back sliding off the opposite side of the warminds' carriage. He landed and fired, taking out the last of the shanks, the Bastard and The Third Ring booming out in unison. Dregs heads disappeared at the command of the Third Ring, and vandal's bodies flew back and away every time the Bastard barked. Castide produced a grenade from his harness channeling solar energy into it and flung it towards the captain. The overly large captain still firing its weapon wildly, trying to track Castide's movements. It stared down at the glowing ball that came to rest in front of it.

Castide stood, holstered his weapons and held out his fist palm up.

The beast looked up from the thing on the ground to Castide, eyes gleaming with defiance. The Captain roared and levelled his weapon at Castide.

"Boom." Castide said casually, as he flicked his fingers up.

The grenade exploded, knocking out Taksis's shields and sending his body flying into a bank of consoles at the wall behind him.

Taksis head reeled in pain, the world turned white for a second, and slowly the ceiling of the facility came into focus. He rolled his head around trying to figure out what happened.

His upper arms felt numb, his mask was leaking ether. He looked down to his legs, one was missing, he tried to get up, but his body screamed at him.

The _she'lot_ stood before him drawing out one of it's weapons. _"Come closer you damned ghoul."_ Taksis thought.

Taksis gripped the hilt of his shock blades, thankful that his lower arms still worked.

As the ghoul leaned in he thrusted and swung, lunging his body forward against all the pain it caused.

He watched as his blades spun uselessly into the air behind the ghoul, his lower arms following closely behind them. He started to roar and immediately stopped when he felt a sharp sting press through his mask and into his jaw.

He stared through the haze of escaping ether coming from him, and into the mask of the daemon that had bested him. He looked from the jutting protrusions at the top of it's head, to the carvings on it's face covering mimicking a mouth full of sneering teeth, and finally to the reflection of his own battered face in the visor, bleeding, broken, and hissing with escaped ether.

The sound cut out, no crackling embers from his burned comrades, no hissing vapor from his mask, no wheezing from his labored breathing.

" _Da'dan kas yur Taksis. Tan zes'ne fre she'lot"_ Taksis rattled out, spitting blood and ether.

Just behind the reflection of the daemons mask, he could see it, one single eye, baleful cold green, remorseless, drilling right back into him.

"Da'shan dis, ba'sloat." Castide spoke.

Taksis' eyes widened and started to curse the daemon when a single sound shattered the silence, a singular metal on metal sound.

Taksis felt his head jerk, and he saw no more.

"Well that was brutal and maybe, a little unnecessary." Agama said.

They moved down a corridor east-ward away from the warmind assembly line, unlike the most of the facility they have seen, this section seemed to be running on reserve power. All wall mounted consoles, keypads, and security stations were dark. All the lighting that cast the "outer ring" of the facility in such brilliance was absent, save for the ground level emergency lighting. Lighting that now cast their dim shadows upward, giving the two an eerie countenance.

"Six fronts, Twilight gap, and Hearthwall. Brutal? Yes. Unnecessary? Never." He responded.

Since the elevators were out they were moving up a stairwell sometimes entire flights at a time slowing and stopping only to cover an opening on to a unvisited floor, or to pause and make sure they weren't being followed.

"Ya know, "Tekky" won't be letting this one go." She informed him. "Next floor, westbound a few hundred yards, an armory." She added.

"Please don't give them nicknames." Castide pleaded in flat monotone.

"Well how many times have we run into her since Venus?" She asked.

Castide grunted as he pulled himself up over the stairwell railing. "Invite her to the ship for cocktails and board games. Once she stops trying to kill us, then she gets a nickname." Castide retorted

"This is it, sub-level six, straight back and on the right." She said. Stopping and slowly rotating to look pointedly at Castide. "We have board games on the ship?" She added, barely hiding her enthusiasm, sensor whips wriggling.

Castide looked at her head cocked to the side and sighed.

Castide loped down the hallway both hands gripped around the Third Ring. He stopped at the door with the words "Armory" printed in 4 different languages, stepping away with his back against the opposite wall scanning both directions of the hall for contact.

"Still has power!" Agama said as she moved in to interface with the pale blue glowing keypad.

"Oooh look at the security on this bugger." She said, mostly to herself.

Castide snapped up his gun at what he thought was movement, but instead was a power fluctuation in the lighting system.

"Cas?" Agama asked.

"All good, just some buggy lights." He responded

"Mmm… And got it!" Agama exclaimed.

As she finished hacking the door lock their entire world lit up, main lighting snapping on in sequence down the hallway. An automated voice seemed to rev up from slow motion into a more normal cadence, Informing the facility of standard information and benign announcements for a staff long gone. The armory door hissed to life revealing rows of armaments and ammunition.

"They got the main power back on." Agama said looking around nervously.

"Seal it back up Aggy, tightly. We'll be back for it when we have the leisure of a shopping day. For now, we should move." Castide decided, pulling the detonator remote from his satchel.

"Sealing it up Cas." She acknowledged. As she went back to work she noticed a weapons case just inside the door with markings she recognized. She tagged it for transmat, watching it glow and fade from existence as the door hissed and slid shut.

"I got you a present!" she said in a low and teasing manner.

She loved how she could see his eye brighten behind his visor when she said that.

He sprinted down to an area of hallway with two adjacent alcoves, signs indicating elevators.

Since the power was back on, they might as well expedite things little.

He keyed the call button just as he armed the detonator in his hand. Setting the detonator for 10 minutes, the elevator door slid open. He stepped inside the elevator car just as he triggered the activation key on the detonator.

"Sub-level 1 has an emergency exit causeway through a secondary control room. Leads half a kilometer into the forest south/southeast." She informed him

He hit the level indicator on the elevator cars control panel.

"ever since the facility came back on-line I now have access to all the sensors, locks, and cameras" She said.

"Cas…" she paused. "They have a prime, it's moving down towards the assembly line, to those incomplete warminds we found." She continued.

"How long till they reach the line?" he asked

"five to six minutes, the managed to get the main loading bay open so they have a straight shot down to the assembly."

"Perfect." He said as he slid the detonator back into a pouch on his harness. "This place have a contingency plan for situations like this?" He asked.

"Yeppers. R&D sub-levels seven through nine are all outfitted with demolition charges, so is the assembly line, but they're all hardwired to two control stations. I can't activate it remotely." She Said.

Castide holstered his hand-cannon and brought his smg back around from its storage from just below his shoulders. He readied it after checking the magazine, took two steps away from the elevator doors, and leveled it. "Directions if you please, Aggy." He asked.

Tekris stalked the corridors fuming and howling. She kicked open doors and overturned desks and cabinets, searching for that damned one eyed _she'lot._ She knew for certain it was him now. She had only seen that kind of carnage few times before. She faced him on mars after linking up with some of Skolas' wolves, he managed to escape by using incoming reinforcements of those giant lumbering idiots claiming the planet. He buzzed her patrol on a stolen pike while she was meeting up with an exiled house for a supply run on their home planets moon, stopping only to make eye contact and speeding off. A dying dreg from the exiled house retold a story of a daemon smiting his brethren with a flaming finger, scything through their forces like a hand wafting through dissipating ether. The rage welled within her.

She saw the aftermath all those times, but today marked the first she saw it wreaked upon her kin.

She was filled with sorrow and rage. Anger for herself for sending her best into that… that…. _Whirlwind._ She froze.

She willed the dread that built up in her away.

She lamented losing Taksis. OH! She should have sent Vikram, he would have known to run. He was always the smartest of the two. The rage threatening overtake her completely.

She remembered stepping into the room, seeing the dreg hanging from the machine, the ground littered with blood and body parts, spilt ether hanging low along the ground creating an eerie fog. Then she saw him laying amongst the refuse, his arms freshly docked and still twitching next to the blades they once wielded, the front half of his face… gone. The rage was drowning her.

Bellowing into the empty corridors she continued her hunt.

Grigis ran his slender finger along the frame of the warmind shell. " _The wonder of it all."_ He thought to himself.

He was frail but towered over even Tekris herself.

Grigis spread all four arms wide and spoke.

"This is our banner-call!" He called to the dregs and vandals around him.

"This is our link to taking back the great machine! Our final journey will be through the work that ancient humans have begun! We will destroy their predecessors and reclaim what is rightly ours!" He continued. "We will grind the _she'lot_ into the dust from which they sprang forth, and rightly take our place as the caretakers of this world. Then we will make the exodus back and retake our world!" He finished.

The dregs and vandals around him were emboldened by his speech, but still weary. The room was far too bright, and several points around the room started to blink intermittently. It was far too much uncertainty for them to become completely enraptured in his words.

Grigis saw the fire in their eyes so he was not put off by their refusal to cheer at his oration. He turned to his servitor Tenkacks and stroked it lovingly.

"Drink it all in." He said to it. "This is where you become a god."


	3. Chapter 3: Fools And Their Heads

Chapter 3

Vikram stepped out into the corridor drinking deep of his ether. He kicked the vandal in front of him. "Too slow." He hissed at his charge.

He knew enough about the systems of the facility already to tap into the surveillance systems.

While deciding to linger and satisfy his curiosity he came upon, and witnessed in its entirety, the death of his brood-brother.

"FOOL!" he cursed out loud. The vandal he previously kicked picked up its pace a little.

Vikram held no love for his _"brother"_ , but nonetheless regretted his demise. Vikram recognized he was a bit more intelligent than most of his brood, Taksis was the biggest, so he stuck close to him. Forming a bond that he would use to gain favor amongst the hierarchy of his house, and so far, it worked. Now he was afraid, he could admit that to himself, but never to any other Eliksni. Strength was all that mattered to them, blindly following whoever has sucked too much ether, bowing to those who could not fit through doors. If he could, he would pledge himself to the daemon who cut down his brother. _"now THAT. Was strength"_ He thought to himself. It was just like Taksis to gape in awe at anything stronger than he was, and it was his end.

Never had he seen such cunning during battle, every movement seemed calculated, rehearsed even. It reminded him of those visual records he found on an old portable ancient _she'lot_ machine his brother found for him. He spent hours with a captive from a raid on an encampment learning that they were not records, but made up stories, _"kung-fu flicks"_ the gift-less thing called them.

Nonetheless, Vikram was terrified. He had to leave, the daemon was headed to the area he was in, and Vikram had no desire to linger in its path. Vikram trudged down the corridor, one vandal in front of him, two dregs behind. It was his ideal patrol.

The vandal eager to prove itself will smash against anything that they came upon, while the dregs behind him will prove easier targets to anything that snuck upon them from the back. This tactic gave him all the best outcomes of surviving any encounter, especially in tight confines such as these. Vikram froze when he heard it, a light tapping that seemed to grow in volume the longer it sustained its percussion. He turned just in time to be blinded by the spray of blood and ether that was his rear guard, the echoes reverberating from every direction.

He grabbed the vandal that led his path by the neck and threw the hapless thing towards the booming sounds of annihilation, and he ran. Vikram used every limb he had, and ran.

Agama kept pace with Castide as they raced down the corridor. "Right here" she messaged to his visor.

No slowing as they veered the corner.

"left!" pinged up in his visor.

Castide's pace never faltered, a veritable metronome of boots against concrete, slowing tempo only when he took aim at the familiar silhouettes at the end of a hallway.

Firing from the hip he emptied a magazine from his suppressed smg downing two dregs, as he was slamming home a new magazine ready to bring down his second captain for the day, something he never thought, in all his second life would happen, happened.

Castide was knocked off his feet.

The vandal looks almost as confused as Castide did as they slammed face to face. As they came to rest on the ground side by side, Castide quickly procured a blade slamming into the dazed combatant's chest and sliding it up to it's neck, the vandals final screech of pain turning into a hiss and then gurgle.

"What the fuck!?" Castide exclaimed, as he aimed his weapon down a now empty corridor.

"He ran away." Agama said.

Castide looked down at his smg to notice a shock-blade buried into the action of his sub-machine gun.

"Effective." He remarked as he unclipped from his harness and threw it aside.

"So much for that stack of glimmer." He said. Pulling both hand-cannons from their respective holsters.

"Smart one, he is." Agama said looking from dead vandal to the captain's escape route.

"Not too smart." Castide said, motioning to a dropped shrapnel launcher.

"Think he'll be back?" he asked.

"We have been fighting the fallen for as long as I can remember, and I can't recall them using their peons quite like that." Agama replied.

"And exactly how far back do you remember, Agama?" Castide said, his tone holding more venom than he intended.

"Cas?" Agama queried. "What do you mean?" she continued.

"Forget it. Another time. Sorry." He said.

Castide moved into the control room, guns still trained on the empty corridor the fallen captain disappeared into.

Agama watched Castide circle around the room setting charges on conduit bulkheads, consoles, and pretty much anything that looked important. She glided to the main console interfacing and hit keys with her sensor whips.

"I spent the better part of a century looking for you Cas." She began.

"I searched up and down coasts with forgotten names, cities with no names, that have names now, and back to those coasts that were once again called something else." She continued.

"I was broken once, not dead like we've found other ghosts, but damn near close. Another ghost found me in a stasis cell, hooked up to all sorts of monitoring devices." She pressed on.

"She fixed me, we traveled together for a short while, but parted ways. She had to find her guardian, and I had to find you." Agama spun up and away from the console, and leveled her gaze with Castide's.

"Not your gift, not someone with similar light, but you." She said.

"Aggy I said…" Castide began

"I _knew_. I had to find _you…_ "She interrupted him, stabbing her sensor whip into his chest armor for emphasis. "And that is the first thing I remember." She said with finality.

Castide gently laid his hand on her and lightly tapped his forehead against her shell.

"I know. I'm sorry. We'll find answers. For both of us." He said softly.

He pulled her in close against his chest and rested his chin on top of her.

"You know I can't cry right?" He chided.

Agama scrambled out of his grasp and shot back over to interface with the console.

"Ass." She called him without looking back.

A slight rumble moved from below them. Castide looked to the monitor he channeled in on the assembly line. Fire reflected onto his visor dimly brightening the room, darkening almost as quickly as it came. The monitor lightened as the smoke in the room they were watching dissipated, revealing torn and burning bodies, shards of a broken servitor, and debris from the warmind shell.

"Still want to set those charges?" Agama asked.

"We should be thorough in all our endeavors Agama." Castide replied

Agama's sensor whips danced across the console keyboard. Spinning reds lights all over the facility extricated themselves from their hidden bays as sirens wound up along with them.

"Protocol seven point six-six has been initiated, all personnel please proceed along designated evacuation routes." A disembodied voice echoed throughout the facility.

"Time to go." Castide said as they rushed out of the room.

Grigis felt young again. He drank deeply from his ether and paraded around the room. He laughed heartily as he orchestrated his shanks dismantling the ancient machine.

He made rounds to all the dregs pulling the clamps and caps of their lower arms.

"No more shackles for those that raise our banner!" he bellowed.

"Drink deep and grow strong my brethren! Today marks a new path for all Eliksni!"

He continued to make rounds but stopped in his tracks when he heard it. A high-pitched sound emanating from various points all around him.

He lowered himself to seek out the offending sound and found it. A device with flashing red light.

He stood and now noticed them all around placed in a distinct pattern.

He turned to watch his confused legion slowly start to back out of the room. His servitor brayed in surprise as the sound stopped, abruptly followed by a chorus of clicks snapping viciously at the crowd gathered in the room.

Grigis's world erupted into one of fire and pain.

Vikram turned a corner moving faster than he thought he was ever capable of. Flying down stair wells and slamming through doors, dislodging them from their frames.

He cursed himself for dropping his weapon. He should have jumped on that daemon as soon as it staggered, but it moved too quickly. Brandishing that blade as soon as the vandal he threw at it collapsed upon him, and the things pet. It just stared at Vikram as if totally unconcerned for it's master.

Vikram knew the situation would not favor him, that damned scrambling vandal knocked his shrapnel launcher away, and Tekris's words lingered in his mind. "Stinks of death" she said as they exited the ketch upon landing, now he agreed with her fully.

He had to get to the archon, next turn, almost there.

Vikram tried to stop as wall of flame engulfed corridor he was about to enter, falling and slamming his shock blade into the ground to slow his trajectory, stopping only to have lingering flames lick at his body. He didn't even feel the shockwave, too lost in his own thoughts, and it almost ended him.

He stood shakily and turned walk away from the now charred walls in front of him. He knew what had happened and needed no more evidence for his course of action. Vikram was leaving this accursed place, house and banner or no.

Castide and Agama moved swiftly along the corridors following the projected directions flashing on the walls of the facility. Castide's guns grasped tightly in both hands just in case of any surprises.

"So, what's the present?" he asked lightly. As they were coming upon the secondary control room.

"Oh that, you'll find out when we get back to the ship, I was able to telegraph a transmat signal once this place's systems came back online. Looks like we have some messages too." She responded, swaying back and forth behind him as they moved.

"No doubt the vanguard whining about going off the reservation again. Maybe Cayde finally bit it and they…" Castide's words cut short as he fell doubled over. His weapons clattering to the ground and sliding ahead of him.

It felt like Shaxx punched him, only from the inside, and he felt as if all his strength was draining from his wound. He felt like someone sucked the air out of him, joints aching in pulses, and then it hit him again bringing him to his knees. He snapped off his helmet and threw it aside feeling as if he needed the air.

"Cas… I don't feel so…" Agama said.

He looked up at her to see her waver, the soft blue light that was her eye fading to black as she fell out of the air sharply smacking into the concrete, and tumbling to rest near Castide, sensor whips splayed out and lifeless.

"Aggy..." he choked out.

Heavy steps reverberated down the hallway behind them in the distance. Castide reached out and pulled Agamas shell close to him as he turned to the approaching sound. Tekris loomed in the distance with eyes filled with glee. He started to drag himself towards his weapons lying a few feet in front of him. He heard an unmistakable hiss rev up behind him and his body lit up with pain and electricity.

Tekris's rage settled when she felt the complex move. Something happened to the archon, some trap left for them. She knew it wasn't Vikram, too smart for that, and the hot head was already dead, so it only made sense it was the old fool. Then the hallways lit up with flashing lights and an ancient voice warbling on about something. She found the remains of Vikram's squad, missing Vikram himself, furthering her need for a calm heart.

The images on the walls seemed to be leading her somewhere, which made her toy with the idea that the great machine finally smiled upon her. Despite herself she allowed it, and when she saw what wait for her down the hallway she was traveling, she almost believed it.

There it was, the thorn in her paw laid before her like an offering. The _she'lot_ seemed hurt, but she could not see any wounds. It started to crawl away from her and she saw them, the creature's weapons. She had been in this position before with this ghoul, and will not make the same mistake again.

"No wounds?" she grumbled. _"let's fix that."_

She raised her line-rifle and sprayed several rounds into the prostate body in front of her.

Castide held Agama close. The mysterious pain subsided only to be replaced with more from a less mysterious source. He checked his wounds, minimal thanks to his armor, but he still felt weak. He knew his light was gone, he tried willing the golden gun into existence, and nothing. No, almost too hot to touch sensation, no invigorating strength he felt when the solar energy enveloped him. _"Well isn't this a shit situation."_ He thought to himself.

At the sound of Tekris quickening her pace, he sat up and reeled back, whispering to Agama's lifeless form in his hand.

"Don't hate me for this."

Threw her into the room ahead of him, watching her bounce off a desk and roll beneath some cabinets.

He grunted in pain as the hulking pursuer brought her rifle stock down into the small of his back.

Tekris flipped the ghoul over, grabbing it by the neck she lifted the object of her ire into the air, slamming it into the wall a few times for good measure before bringing its face to hers.

The _she'lot_ has lost its gift, she noticed, for there was no stink other than the smell of the things armor and weapons coming off it.

She laughed to herself as she drew her shock blade with her one lower arm while staring into the ghoul's eye.

She spoke in the thing's language.

"losst your gifft? Yess?" She almost laughed in joy at the look of surprise on her foe's face.

"Sspeak your language, I've learned." She explained.

"Yeah, I noticed. Could work on your diction a little, but you're getting there." Castide said.

Tekris slammed him into the wall once more, pinning against it.

"Your kind without the gifft, sso weak. You're ssoftesst prey now." She hissed into his face.

"MY prey." She followed with, slowly starting to squeeze his neck.

Castide slowly moved his arm to the small of his back towards the scabbard slid up and into his harness.

"Good job. You win." He replied.

"No, not yet _she'lot._ " She barked.

Tekris raised her right lower arm and pointed towards the room where Agama lay.

"Firsst, I take your pet. Then I take your arm." she growled running a finger along his shoulder.

"Sseal you in this place, forever, without your gifft." She finished.

Castide froze with his hand gripped around the handle of the blade as he stared into her eyes.

The loss of Agama scared him into inaction.

Tekris started to move towards the room dragging Castide along the wall.

"Tekris!" he rattled out.

The baron stopped and peered at him with eyes brimming with triumph.

"Something you should know first…" he said, voice straining.

The baron started to growl until she saw Castide's glowing green eye turn to a deep red.

"Ne' en'tan husra eshe'!" Castide growled.

Tekris's eyes widened as Castide whipped the hidden blade down and then up severing the arm holding him up at the elbow. As he fell he brought the blade back down in a gleaming arc taking her lower right arm.

Tekris howled and swung her arc blade towards Castide's head burying its tip into the wall as it traveled.

Castide ducked and spun, the sound of arc energy crackling above him as the blade passed far too close to his head. He drove the point of his blade into Tekris's knee just behind the kneecap. Pushing himself off the wall he dove between her legs, bringing the blade with him as he moved, feeling the flesh it was imbedded in give way. He rolled and stood now behind the screaming giant, he moved once more with his blade singing into her last remaining arm.

Tekris felt her arm give into the onslaught as fell to her knees, watching it swing limply away from her still gripping her shock blade, stuck in wall in front of her. The world seemed to stop as the ghoul flipped the blade 'round till the pointed back at her. She looked to the face of her nemesis eye still burning red as he plunged the blade into her chest, driving her back and pinning her against the opposite wall she once had him pressed against.

Castide brought his elbow down snapping the blade off at the hilt. He stepped back eyeing his handiwork still gripping the swords handle as he did so.

Tekris looked at him and watched his eye bleed back to the baleful green that haunted her memory.

"Kill me _she'lot_ , end thiss." She wheezed out.

Castide dropped the blade handle at her knees.

"I'm tired, you do it." He responded as he limped off to recover his weapons and his ghost.

"KILL ME!" Tekris screamed. "Kill me..." she gurgled, blood and ether welling up in her mask.

Her head drooped blood dripping out of her mask and spattering against the ground.

"Kill me." She repeated, her eyes dimming.

"kill…" she whispered as her vision clouded.

"Me."

Her weight shifted, and she fell forward, barely registering Castide's blade being pulled from her back, she landed with a dull thud. Her vision fading, she watched as her nemesis picked up his belongings, his pet, and limped off down the hallway. Not once did he look back, and her sight finally faded to black.

Castide shouldered the hatch, and with a groan of long rusted metal, it gave way spilling them into dense forest, early morning light streaming through the trees.

Castide put his helmet back on and activated a waypoint beacon on his sparrow.

Agama stirred in his arms.

"Guardian!" she yelled as she came to, spreading her shell out scanning and searching for Castide.

"Castide!" she called out.

"Right here Aggy." He said almost a little too casually.

She spun around and shot straight at him, burrowing into his jacket.

"I don't know what happened, everything went black, I..." She rambled.

"I thought I lost you. I couldn't feel your light and I…" She paused.

"I can't feel any light, period. Oh no, what's going on?!"

"Calm down I've noticed. We've lost our light." Castide said.

"I blacked out in that tunnel and I think I saw something that may help us out, but for now why don't you check our messages."

"Uh… Yeah… On it." Agama said, still in shock.

"We're fine for now, but we still have work to do." Castide consoled her. "Are you good Aggy?"

Agama shook out her whips and nodded once.

"Five by five Cas."

They trekked back to Castide's sparrow giving the facility they just escaped a wide berth, in case any stragglers spotted them. As Castide was pulling the camo netting and debris from his sparrow the ground shook violently.

Castide looked back towards the facility to see black smoke streaming from various points.

The hump of the ketch started to rise, and he ducked a little as it moved up and over their position.

"Someone survived that, huh?" he asked himself as the ketch sped off and away towards the southwest.

"think we'll run into them again?" Agama asked

"Just keep an eye out for orange banners. Any word yet?" Castide responded, changing the subject.

"City is under attack." Agama answered.

"Fallen? Hive? Cause I think I've had enough Fallen for a while." Castide asked, a little taken aback.

"Cabal…" Agama answered, Staring out towards the east.

"Got sick of the sandbox eh? Sand eaters? Sky burners? Who?" He asked.

"Red legion, and Cas, they've taken the city already. There was a message on one of the Hidden's bandwidth about a rally point in the EDZ. It's not just us, everyone has lost their light." Agama continued.

Castide fired up the sparrow, revving the turbines as it lifted off the ground.

"We're a few days from where we stashed the ship, so keep an ear to those comms. Hopefully something comes up about that. What about the vanguard?" He asked.

"Missing, we'll have to get to a comms tower to find out anything else. I'm pretty sure the city's network got hit, because everything has been quiet for at least 6 hours now." She said.

"Let's get moving, hopefully we left enough food out for the runt." Said Castide as he mounted his sparrow.

"Don't call him that, he's not a runt." Agama retorted as the slid into a saddlebag on the sparrow.

"Hmph! He's pretty runty." Castide said as he throttled the sparrow into motion.

They careened through trees until they hit an open plain, Castide cornered sharply and shot out over a ravine. He toggled the stabilizers and moved the nose of the sparrow straight up as they fell, fully opening the throttle as the came closer to the old highway at the bottom of the ravine. They came to hover four feet above the asphalt as Castide played the jet wash enough to keep them vertical. He toggled the stabilizers back on and nosing the machine down, they shot off down the highway dodging rusted out vehicles, and rousing local wildlife from their hides. A speed limit sign rattled and fell as they passed. Agama noticed some ancient graffiti painted on to it.

" _I can't ride_ 55" It reminded her of Krethlynn. "I hope she's safe." She said to herself quietly as secured the straps of the bag.

She settled in and went to work cracking the encryption of all the files she gleaned from the facility. It should keep her entertained for _most_ of the journey.


	4. Chapter 4: Here's To Us

Chapter 4

Two elongated ears extended above the underbrush, one twitched to the side momentarily sensing something. The owner of the ears inched forward through the long grass, revealing a pink twitching nose leading brown inquisitive face.

The rabbit bounded forwards a bit rising up on it's hind legs sniffing the air, testing the air around the strange object invading its territory.

"Fuzzy…" Agama whispered.

The sound of shattered glass cut through the ambient sound of wind slipping through evergreen trees. The rabbit darted back into the brush leaving a crooked trail of wavering grass as the only evidence that it had even been there, and two small brown spheres on the asphalt where it once sat for a moment.

"We're losing light!" Agama called out at volume.

She sat on the saddle of Castide's sparrow tilted to the side as far as her geometry would allow.

"We've already lost it!" A muffled voice called back from the dilapidated building behind her.

"Daylight!" She called back. Whips twitching in irritation.

"AHA! Found it!" Castide exclaimed as he emerged from the building.

Cradled in his arms were two different bottles each containing a similar brownish liquid. Castide's face twisted in the best lop-sided grin his exo face can achieve.

"Happy?" Agama asked as she rose into the air trying catch a last glimpse of the retreating rabbit/

"Of course. This stuff is rarer than an ahamkara starring in a center ring theatre group. You can't replicate whiskey like this. Just one of these bottles would fetch enough glimmer to fund Kreth's research for another lifetime, all while living it up in a penthouse at city center!" Castide enthused.

"If we have a city to go back to." Agama said.

"Wind right out of my sails Aggy." Castide replied, gingerly wrapping the bottles in his cloak.

"I'd miss Krethlynn. I won't forgive you if something happened to her that we could have done something about." She said, looking at him pointedly

"Of all the people in the city, guardian or no, Kreth is one we don't have to worry about." He said.

"That wily bitch probably saw it coming." He added.

"You're right about that. But the vanguard, the people, Cas they need our help too." She said.

"They've got that one asshole, ya know, the one we helped out with the vault and Oryx. The mute with the chicken-shit ghost." He replied.

"Oh, them?" Agama queried.

"Yeah the one that never takes off their helmet and dances all the time." He answered.

"We should still go." Agama interred.

Castide saddled his sparrow and fired up the turbines.

"let's move then." He said.

"Hey, by the way I decrypted those files and I'm positive that was you in the video, that third file confuses me a little though. It reads like an after-action report on you and your companion."

She said. "AFTER you were taken to Deimos…"

"I thought Deimos was dead, nothing on it, just a rock." He said

"Just a construction depot and warehouses according to vanguard archives, but this file we got from Agamemnon indicate something there we should consider. The report says both of you were found dying near where the traveler broke atmosphere, opened up by an unknown projectile, dying in transit to NS-5 depot." She replied.

Castide grunted. "We take back the city. Kick some cabal heads in. Make sure what little friends we have are safe, see if we can help anyone, then we go to Deimos and figure out our shit."

"Sound like a plan?" he looked at Agama while revving the sparrow's turbines.

Agama nestled into a saddlebag.

"Let's just make sure Krethlynn is safe first, I'd rather not have to rely on any other cryptarch for our needs. Plus, I like her… And she likes you, which is rare for a cryptarch by the way, showing any kind of favor towards a hunter..."

"Yeah yeah, all glimmer and gunpowder. That's all we are." Castide responded.

He twisted the throttle and shot off into the dusk.

Krethlynn Vale stood over a dead Psion, her blue-gray skin shimmered with an otherworldly pearlescent sheen as her neon gold eyes danced inquisitively. Her fire-red hair tied neatly into a bun at the back of her scalp with the sides buzzed clean. All her features enhanced and shining from the scene in front of her.

Her aircar, a year and a half of glimmer salary, in flames.

Her apartment bloc, five thousand glimmer a month for two bedrooms one and a half bath with a lavish patio that housed her daffodil beds all grown from ancient seeds looted from a pre-golden-age seed bank, also in flames.

She looked left down the street towards the city center just in time to see an errant missile slam into the building that housed her office, library, and lab.

She let her jaw fall as she gasped.

"Got it open! You sure this takes us outside the city?" A voice called behind her.

Krethlynn stamped her foot onto the chest plate of the dead psion.

"We should take this with us, I need to study it." She said.

The warlock stood from the grating she was looking in and stomped over to Krethlynn.

"You will get your chance to study them, lots of them, only they'll be alive, angry, and armed, if we don't get the hell out of here NOW." She said as she grabbed Krethlynn's wrists.

Krethlynn looked at her longtime friend with half hooded eyes.

"Fine." She said as she shook her hands free from her grasp.

"This will take us outside the wall, but I need to stop at a junction box down there. I need to send a message."

The warlock looked at Krethlynn, dumbfounded.

"Who would you call using a junction box in this city, during a siege, that would answer!? The warlock asked.

"I'm not using the box, just the transponder inside it." Krethlynn elaborated

"do you have a ship readily available to us right now? No? Didn't think so. Grab the body."

Krethlynn responded.

"I am not grabbing the body, it's still warm… And twitching." The warlock said, fists on hips.

"Hmm. Good point, Pallowa might try to eat it." Krethlynn said, bring her finger to the tip of her nose in thought.

"Let us be on our way then." She added as she walked over to the storm drain access and dropped in, a single shallow splash marking

"Dex, remind me why we're friends with her." The warlock asked.

"Stimulating conversation, has good taste in music..." Her ghost turned to look at the burning apartment. " _Had_ an extensive whiskey collection."

Brexley Shaan ran her hand through her short cropped black hair, emerald eyes rolling upwards in irritation.

"Oh! And she _actually_ likes you. With your social skills that, in itself, is quite a feat. I don't mean to be rude, but I do think its time this whole, _loner_ bit came to an end." Dexter rambled on.

"You know what they say. Pack and the wolf and whatnot." Her ghost concluded as he zipped down into the drainage grate.

Brexley sighed, Kicked the dead psion, picked up her shotgun, and dropped down the hole. _"Who the hell is Pallowa?"_ She thought to herself as she fell into darkness.

A pair of yellow-green eyes watched Castide as he dismounted his sparrow, and tracked him as he moved towards the open berth of his ship.

Castide's footfalls came quieter than the rustling of leaves and the rippling sound of the camo netting covering his ship, until one didn't.

A snap echoed through the clearing as faint chuckling sound erupted behind him. He looked down at the pieces of bone and flesh his boot fell upon, as the sound of rustling grass grew louder.

" _Did not leave enough food out."_ Was his only thought as his world turned sideways.

The large best tackled Castide to the ground and continued to rub its head all over Castide's prone form, stopping only to sniff at his pouches and satchels, eliciting a loud purr as it did so.

"I gave that one to ya." Castide said to the large feline pinning him to the ground.

"Eeeeeee!" Agama squealed as she zoomed in to nestle into the neck fur of the large black lynx, wrapping her tendrils around its neck.

"Oh, my big buddy boo! I missed you." Agama cooed into the beast's fur.

Castide saw the blinking light at the comms panel blinking inside his ship and pushed the large beast off him.

"C'mon Pallowa, someone needs a ride." He said, as he stood and moved into the cargo bay of his ship.

Agama rode as the cat padded along on the heels of Castide.

"Is it from Krethlynn?" Agama asked as she rolled off Pallowa's back and into the air.

"Yup, at the rendezvous point we decided on. Seems like she's been there for a day or two… With company." He answered.

"Company huh." Agama said flatly.

Castide jogged out to his sparrow and pushed it back into the cargo hold of his ship.

"City under siege Aggy, the woman lives near the outer wall. So most likely a refugee or two"

He said as he cinched up the sparrow into the roof of the ship, strapping its runners to tie-downs bolted to the ships frame.

"We can hold about six or seven, any more than that and it'd be standing room only." She said as she zipped out of the hold.

"And with the way you fly, Hah!" She called back, as she flew around the ship releasing the tie-downs draped over the ship and collecting the stakes left in the ground.

"We can make trips if need be." He sighed.

Castide toggled a control panel just inside the bay door as Agama whistled in dropping a collection of stakes into a container at his feet. The camo netting flapping loosely in the breeze, retracted at several points along the ships fuselage, drawing itself in and pulling taut along the hull.

Castide stepped out check for any catches with the tarpaulin system.

His ship was essentially his home, while he had several safe-houses peppered around the system, his exploits caused him to take on a more nomadic approach.

A Minerva class prototype jump-ship that cost him fairly large sum, and more than a few insane (and possibly illegal) favors for Amanda Holliday. Heavily modified to his specifications that included a larger than normal cargo bay, the tarpaulin system, a tweaked and lightened NLS drive, several hard-point mounts for various munitions, four supercharged vector-thrust engines, and then the reason he fell in love with the ship in the first place. A nose mounted gun-turret with a massive three barreled 30-millimeter cannon.

Castide and Dane-7, who worked in Daito's R&D section spent many hours scribbling notes and formulae on napkins, while drinking their weight, and nearly the bar's stock of whiskey and rum, designing the gun and its systems.

One night of tinkering and one too many bottles, they inadvertently destroyed half of the lab they were building it in, when Dane decided it was time to test the elemental induction system.

Castide grinned at the memory of Dane lifting his arms under the spray of the fire suppression system in the lab and exclaiming "Rain!?", then gesturing out to view of the city they had just created. "But the skies are so clear!" Dane yelled, gesturing to the view before collapsing into a fit of boisterous laughter.

Much to Castide's surprise the next morning, Dane wasn't removed from his position at Daito, but promoted.

"C'mon Pallowa!" Castide called out chuckling at the memory.

The large cat reluctantly getting up from it's 'leftovers' and padding into the ship.

"What are you on about?" Agama asked, floating over to where the feline sat.

Castide hit another few controls and the boarding ramp slid into the ship, armored doors swinging out then back in again sealing the trio inside.

"Just reminding myself why we should put off Deimos for a while." He replied.

"Ah. So now you're thinking a living future bests hunting a dead past?" She asked.

Castide took off his cloak and tossed it onto a cot near the front of the ship and climbed into the cockpit.

"The past is dead Aggy, it isn't going anywhere." Castide Answered.

Toggling switches above him and lightly draping the cockpit seat harness over his shoulder, as the ship whined to life.

He shifted to look back at her and the yawning fur-ball she rested next to.

"Just reminding myself that we should do our best to keep those that have a future from joining it."

He eased back a control and the ships engines whine became a roar. Outside the world fell away as the turbines vectored thrust played around, keeping the ship level.

Castide tapped in coordinates on the navigation system and a waypoint pinged on the curved heads-up display. He pushed the throttle forward and the craft shot off, clipping the tops of trees on its ascent picking up speed, and streaking of into the clouds.

Brexley Shaan shivered as she poked at the smoldering fire.

"Three days Kreth." Brexley said.

Krethlynn stirred in her sleeping bag.

"Good morning! Day three Kreth! Where's. Our. Ride?" She said at volume, enunciating the last three words, each with a prod into the sleeping bag.

Krethlynn opened her eyes and sighed. She twisted and turned, looking like some overgrown floundering grub as she moved to glare at her friend.

"Well…" She started, unzipping her bag and scrambling to stand.

"He's never been one to be on time, always finding a new rock and hard place to waltz into, or some watering hole to wallow around in." She explained while pulling on her long coat and sitting down on a crate to pull on her boots.

"Of course, we can assume that because you lost your light, that he lost his light as well." She ran the fingers through her shock of red hair, tying it off in a quick ponytail.

"Which could mean he's dying or dead, although that is very unlikely. Castide is quite tenacious you see…" She rambled on. "Why one time I joined him on a little expedition to Mare Nectaris. And this massive ogre had him…"

Brexley looked up at her chattering friend, her emerald eyes wide with disbelief.

"Castide." She breathed out, interrupting Krethlynn's narration.

"Castide-1. The renegade. You called Castide-1!?" She exclaimed.

"He's hardly a _renegade_ , Brexley." Krethlynn said.

She stood and walked to the back end of the worn down building they were in.

"The vanguard wouldn't sanction his investigation due to some kerfuffle they were up in arms about, so he… uh…" She paused.

"Went left when they told him to go right." She said shrugging, with a teasing smirk on her face.

"He knocked out Zavala! I was there! Cayde was laughing! Ikora looked _Genuinely_ surprised! A whole squad of peacekeepers were laid flat, and three of them actually needed to be resurrected!" Brexley elaborated wringing her hands, and looking off at nothing.

"Ah… Yes… I was hoping that since you were a recently found guardian, that you hadn't heard about that particular event." She said as she pulled a crate off some shelving.

"It was my first time in the tower Kreth, I hadn't even shaken off the knowledge that I used to be dead." She said standing up hugging herself.

"I still have the entire footage of the event." Dexter chimed in.

"One of the only two copies since the gag order. One in my memory core, one in Shaxx's ghost's." He said.

"I would very much like to see that one day, Dexter." Krethlynn said as she procured two ration packs from the crate.

"Breakfast?" Krethlynn asked a little too cheerily, holding out one of the rations to Brexley.

Brexley Shaan Sat back down, already exhausted.

"I'd rather have a drink." She sighed, rubbing her temples.

"Well since this is one of his safe-houses…" Krethlynn said as she turned back to dig in the opened crate.

"I can accommodate that request, although it is a bit early for it." She added turning around with two glasses and a bottle of caramel liquid, clinking the together and winking devilishly.

Brexley let her arms fall limply and leaned her head against the wall to regard her friend for a moment before holding her gloved hand out.

"Gimmie." She said.

Castide banked his craft low around a mountain peak off in the distance he could barely make out the walls of the city, the sight of the traveler blocked by great plumes of black smoke.

What he could see of it didn't look like the great white orb he knew, it was covered in black scales with ridges running at different angles from some giant mechanical claw.

He reached up and toggled a control, causing a shimmer to ripple along the canopy glass.

"That's a lot of cabal." Agama said gesturing towards the ships peppering the sky around the city

Castide grunted and ran through the channels on his communications unit until he found one with an intermittent squawk.

"Hotel tango sierra Hestia, copy." He called onto the channel.

The squawk was cut off by static and a gruff voice answered.

"Shattered shards Cas, I knew this mess wouldn't give you any problems." The voice said.

"Yeah, nothing I couldn't handle Dane, how are you holding up?" Castide

"By holing-up Cas." Dane-7 replied.

"Got about 400 souls down here with me in a bunker, courtesy of Daito. I knew something was up when a bunch of D-O ships launched off. I scrambled to get these folks down here when I saw the tower light up." Dane finished.

Castide looked out towards where the vanguard held counsel, his glaring green eye reflecting back at him in the glass as he passed by the massive burning torch that use to be the tower.

"We got a lot of lightless guardians down here with us Cas. Had to drag them in kicking and screaming. How are you holding up?" Dane asked his voice sounding grave through the channel.

"Same boat Dane. Looks like they've constructed some kind of shell around the traveler, cutting off the light." Castide answered.

"Any plans to deal with this situation, or have the powers that be, finally lose their ability to come up with inspiring mottos?" He asked.

"Vanguards been quiet, we don't know if we even have a vanguard anymore. Word is that the tower was the first hit. Last I heard is that the EDZ is the place to be, even had some guardians mumble something about something there in their fever dreams. We've got an access tunnel we use to bring in, and move out things we don't need anyone looking at. Lets out in a nice little secluded place, so we have been ferrying small groups out when we can." Dane explained.

"Dane, I've got a small errand to run, but I'll be back to help when the next chance comes up." Castide Said.

"You gettin' soft on me one-eye?" Dane asked incredulously.

"Don't worry about me, go pick up that ninnyhammer we call a cryptarch. Yeah, I know why you're in town. We'll either meet up in the EDZ, or in the great beyond. First rounds on you, whatever outcome." He finished.

Castide stared out towards the city he was slowly circling.

"First rounds on me Dane. Good luck." He said

"Good luck Cas. Hestia out."

The channel died and reverted to its random squawking. Castide shut down the comms unit and angled his ship towards the south.

Brexley sat in one of the blasted-out windows of their hideout, her finger tracing the rim of the glass next to her. She leaned her head against the window frame and looked up at the rocky out-cropping. It formed a cave of sorts shielding the derelict building from most of the high altitude winds.

She took a swig from her glass and grimaced a bit.

"Hey Kresh!" she slurred loudly

"What was this place?" she asked swirling her glass above her head.

Krethlynn was packing snowballs and placing them in various patterns on the plateau in front of the building. She stopped her task and looked at her friend with one eye, then looking up at the outcropping.

"Ooop!" She hooted as the motion cause her to roll back from her crouched position onto her rump.

"Uh…" She looked up and around, she saw her glass in the snow some short ways from her, and began to crawl towards it.

"It'sha… mmm." She said pausing to sip from her glass, holding a finger up.

"An old geo-thermal venting fashility." She said. "Plant is on the other side of the mountain. Pipe all it's exhaust up through the mountain and out up above ush." She concluded gesticulating wildly.

"You're drunk!" Brexley called out.

Krethlynn raised an eyebrow as she regarded her friend. She calmly picked up one of her snowballs.

"I'm shorry Pluto." She whispered to the snowball and flung it towards Brexley.

The snowball hit Brexley square on the nose causing her to yelp in surprise.

"Hah! Not drunk enough apparently!" Krethlynn yelled.

Brexley looked at her friend with surprise, gulped down the rest of her drink, and began packing a snowball from the drift next to the building.

Krethlynn looked up and muttered "Oh shit." Into the glass she was drinking from and started scrambling for the concrete barricades surrounding the building, gathering snowballs as she did so.

"What are they doing?" Agama asked.

Castide looked out towards where Agama indicated.

He pulled up a zoomed image on the ships targeting system.

"Snowball fight it looks like." He replied, chuckling.

He flew into the safehouse's coordinates in a slow spiral, checking for threats as they approached.

"We'll break it up in a minute." Castide said.

Krethlynn ducked Brexley's oncoming onslaught.

"Don't hit whiskey!" She yelled and pointed to Brexley's left.

"Huh?" Brexley said, looking off in the direction she pointed.

"Hah! Gotcha!" Krethlynn exclaimed, shaking the half-emptied bottle as she threw her chilled ordinance.

Brexley screamed as she pulled off her coat using it to shield herself.

A sound of roaring turbine followed by a brief blast of warm air overcame them with enough force to send Krethlynn toppling over her barricade, and blowing Brexley's outer cloak into air, causing her to lose balance enough to collapse in the snow.

A seemingly magical doorway opened in front of them amongst the scream of jumpship engines.

A ramp extended out and down as Castide appeared in the doorway.

"You rang Kreth!?" he yelled out.

"Is that a cloaking module!?" She yelled back.

"Yeah, don't tell Cayde!" was his response.

"C'mon Brexley!" She called out to the confused warlock.

"Our. Ride. Is. Here." She exaggerated every word with a finger into the snow.

Krethlynn clambered into the ship hugging Castide.

"I've got stories." She slurred at him.

"Pillow!" she squealed and stumbled into the ship, tackling the large cat.

Castide held out his hand to the warlock approaching his ship.

"Daylight's wasting!" He called out.

"It's barely noon!" Brexley called back trudging towards the open berth, stopping only to pick up the bottle of whiskey before walking up the ramp.

She ignored his proffered hand entering the ship, only to have her snow-packed boots deny her, as she fell.

Her fall stopped short as she felt an arm wrap around her, she felt the bottle slip out of her grasp, and the other arm belonging to the one who arrested her fall shot out and snatched it before it could shatter against the gangway.

"I have better stuff, but a waste is still a waste." He said to her, pulling her upright and setting the bottle back in her hands.

She glared at him and wordlessly moved past him into the ships hold, setting herself down on a cot attached to the framing inside the ship. She uncorked the bottled and took a swig staring at the wall opposite of her.

A weight depressed the fabric she was sitting to her left, she looked towards the intruding presence expecting the renegade hunter. She yelped in surprise when a furry face containing two yellow-green eyes and a wet nose bump her cheek, while eliciting low, constant rumble.

"He likesh you." Krethlynn cooed at her as she curled up in the cot with Pallowa between them.

Brexley looked at Castide with eyes full of fear.

Castide Winked at her as he worked the controls to bring in the ramp and close the bay doors.

"Don't worry. He'll only eats things considerably smaller than he is. His name is Pallowa." He said calmly as he strode to the cockpit.

Brexley looked at the large cat with eyes wide. The large felin purred and softly headbutted her cheek.

"Where's your ghost?" Castide asked as he paused before climbing into the pilot's seat.

"Right here sir. Ready to.." Dexter started materializing above Brexley.

"Aggy. Find out what he knows." Castide cutting him off.

"Will do." Agama replied floating in closer to the warlock's companion.

"Oh my…" Dexter said as he took in the visage of his own kind.

He took in the vex chromed frontier shell with harpy sensor whips waving in the air behind her, but what threw him off completely, was the jagged plasma burned piece of steel jutting out from her lower quadrant.

"You have seen some things." He said.

"I'll tell ya all about it. After you fill me in on some details we're missing." Agama replied moving towards the rear of the ship.

Brexley hugged the bottle close and leaned against the framing of the ship.

"Even his ghost is terrifying." She muttered to herself.

"Wait until you see his guns!" Krethlynn mumbled out as if she heard what Brexley muttered to herself, promptly falling asleep curled up on the cot next to her.

"Strap in." Castide called back as he looked back into his ships hold.

"This should be quite a trip." He muttered to himself as he pushed the throttle forward.


	5. Chapter 5: Sun's Out Gun's Out

Chapter 5

"Rejected. I won't waste resources on the _potential_ of the information offered." Zavala Said arms folded.

"And I won't risk any guardians on an operation that benefits you on a more personal level, than it does this city." He continued.

"I don't need guardians. I just need guns, ammunition, medical supplies, and rations. Enough to fill my ship and…" Castide reasoned.

"Denied, Castide!" Zavala interrupted.

"Two ketches, Two different house banners, seven clicks from their perimeter!" Castide raised his voice, stepping towards Zavala.

"You of all people should know this isn't just another raid on an outlying community. Hearthwall is going to fall!" Castide argued.

"Hearthwall is a den of thieves and smugglers, willing to cut each other's throats over scraps." Zavala responded through gritted teeth.

"I kinda like the place." Cayde -6 chimed in.

"Knowing that place they probably falsified those reports and goaded you into brokering this deal." Zavala finished, ignoring Cayde.

"I scouted those ketches, I filed the report, and I told them that I would bring help." Castide said flatly, taking another step towards the titan.

"You told them wrong." Zavala said dropping his arms to his sides, fists clenched.

"There are families in that town." Castide's voice rumbled with malice.

"Denied." Zavala replied calmly.

Castide's arm turned into a blur.

"Oooh!" Krethlynn and Agama called out in unison as they huddled over the images on the data pad's screen.

"I can't believe you haven't seen this before Agama." Krethlynn said looking at the ghost.

Cayde's laugh sounding tinny and compressed coming from the tiny speakers.

"I wasn't there for it." She said enraptured with the events on screen.

"I was in the hanger with Amanda loading up our ship." Agama added.

"With all the equipment Zavala said you couldn't have?" Brexley inquired.

"Yup. We even managed to have a few guardians tag along after Amanda dropped some hints into the right ears. Exos, most of them." Agama answered.

"No wonder you guys were designated renegades." She said looking off towards where Castide stood staring off at the shard peaking up over the horizon.

"What happened at Hearthwall?" She asked. Turning back to the group one hand holding a steaming mug, the other stroking between Pallowa's ears.

"Well…" Agama started. Wrapping her tendrils around the handle of a carafe.

"Lanya-12, our sole warlock, managed to ferry all the non-combatants out to a safe location and three days later…" She paused to refill Krethlynn's mug.

"Nothing."

"What?" Brexley asked.

"A week went by and Cas went to assess things and found that they had been tracking Lanya's ship. They moved one ketch to take our secondary location at Destrier Ridge where we sent most of the people."

Agama continued her story.

"Cas and the twin titans, Andrew-10 and Stone-10, went to back-up Lanya only to find hundreds of fallen bodies and the burning wreckage of the ketch, and Lanya standing between that and the refugees holding pieces of her ghost."

Agama poured a third mug.

"All four of them returned to Hearthwall just as all hell broke loose, two days of non-stop fighting, and Hearthwall still stood." She finished.

Agama wrapped her appendages around the mug and moved to Brexley, handing her the mug.

"She fought without her ghost? But then she couldn't…" Brexley said

"Bring it to him, He can tell you the rest" Agama quickly tilted in Castide's direction.

"He's not as scary as he seems..." She paused. "Most of the time."

Brexley stood up from the creaky collapsible chair and moved away from the field stove they were sitting around. She walked past her and Krethlynn's tent looking down the hillside at which Castide's ship was positioned on. Rows of other tents and makeshift stations, refugees and lightless guardians milling about helping each other, or consoling each other.

She looked towards Castide his silhouette leaning against the hull of his ship and the luminous shard across the river in the distance.

"She told me to bring you some." She said as she stepped up next to him.

Castide stopped whatever he was doing with his hands and looked at the mug.

"What is it?" he asked reaching out for it.

"Umm… Coffee I thought." She replied considering her own mug

"Sorry, old and really vague exo joke." He said.

Brexley peered over to the items he had in his other hand.

"Are you knitting!?" She asked, surprised.

"Yeah…" He replied bringing the steaming mug to his mouth.

"I find it calming and it gives us more to trade with than just guns and glimmer." He handed her his handiwork to inspect.

"The outlying communities don't really have access to the fineries of city living, so we're actually quite popular when we roll around."

She inspected the half-finished fabric in her hand.

"This more like woven cloth than anything else." She said looking at him with thinly veiled awe.

"Practice makes perfect." He said, sitting down and reclining against a rock.

Brexley perched herself on landing gear extending out from his ship.

"Agama said you can tell me more about Hearthwall." She said swirling the liquid in her mug.

"From the beginning? Or did she leave you with a cliffhanger?" he said stuffing the needlework in a satchel his feet.

"Lanya lost her ghost, hundreds of dead fallen, what happened next?" She asked.

"Little more to it than that. Lanya was patrolling the area around Destrier Ridge. The fallen were waiting for that moment and started their attack on the non-coms. Children, elderly, sick, it didn't matter. They weren't even a house, just banner-less pirates looking kill something, and take anything they can get their hands on." He drank from the mug.

"She let loose on the entire regiment when she saw what happened, stormcallers…" He whistled.

"An entire ketch hold of fallen, still had arc energy snapping through 'em when we arrived, making them twitch. She overloaded the ketch's reactor just for spite." He chuckled.

"We arrived, and she was holding pieces of her ghost in her hands. Her ghost broke itself against a Captain's blades, protecting her."

Castide reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of ghost shell attached to a small cord.

"Since Lanya runs Hearthwall now. This is our pass." He showed her.

Brexley balked at the sight of a dismantled ghost.

"Broke into seven pieces, one for each of us that fought for Hearthwall. Shivers of Foe, it's what some of the locals refer to us as." He finished.

"And the rest of the fallen?" She asked sipping her coffee.

"Dead. Lanya Fought alongside us, wouldn't let us stop her. She was elegant and brutal, using the last of the light inside her to cut swathes into the raiders. If you were back in town it looked like a little bad weather on the horizon, but in it, it was a maelstrom." He answered.

"Her actions rallied us and the rest of the town into greater actions than I thought possible. She was amazing. _IS_ amazing."

He pulled out a flask and emptied some of its contents into the mug.

"Without her ghost and her connection to the light diminished, she wouldn't return to the tower just to live a quiet life. So, she accepted Hearthwall's offer and stayed."

He offered the flask to her.

She grimaced and shook her head, waving him off.

"Still feeling it from yesterday." She smiled weakly. "But thank you."

"Fair enough." He said, sliding the flask back into his jacket, and staring off at the shard thoughtfully sipping at his drink.

"She has since then built that place into a thriving community, the twins stayed and helped her build. Viv went back to the city along with Mira, but they visit time to time, still think Viv is one of Ikora's little shadows. And here I am. That's the story."

She studied him for moment, still unsure. Castide had since changed out of his armor, now wearing a pair of simple boots, Black fatigue trousers, and a black shirt under his jacket.

" _He almost looks normal, almost harmless."_ Brexley thought to herself.

"Ya know when Kreth told me that a renegade guardian was picking us up. I was a little scared."

She said.

"Renegade?" Castide repeated. "I made the list!?" He asked, his green eye gleaming.

"You're happy about that?" She asked.

"Kind of… Yeah." He said, grinning lopsidedly.

"I was there, you know…" She said.

"Freshly reborn and first time in the tower, trying to chase down my ghost, and the next thing I know." She brought her fist to her palm. "Bam! One of the most intimidating and powerful individuals I've come to know. Laid out like a fresh laundry."

"bah!" Castide exclaimed. "I knew he'd say no, it was a diversion, I just…" He paused to ponder into his drink. "I lost my temper..." He paused.

"Hell, he probably knew what I was up to and played along to see how far I'd go." He finished.

"I don't think being unconscious for 3 hours looked like _playing along._ And you definitely didn't seem to be lost in the throes of a tantrum as you pushed by me on your way out of the hall." She said, raising an eyebrow.

"For somebody walking into a throng of ten or eleven peacekeepers, you seemed pretty calm about it." She finished

"I'm always calm." Reaching back into his jacket for his flask. "Part of the whole _exo_ thing. Emotionless robots." He said.

"Oh come on..." She started.

"Beep boop bop!" he interrupted.

"Nobody thinks that way and you know it." She argued.

"Wrong. Nobody tells you they think that way, but they think it." He shot back.

"You sound pretty human right now." She said looking down.

"Cause we are…" He poured out the coffee and just started to drink straight from the flask.

"We can still feel anger, sadness, pain, love. Just everything else is… ah… accelerated." He continued.

"We are in every sense of the word _human_. We just have metal heads cause a mind is a terrible thing to waste." He said laughing to himself.

"You're drunk" She said.

"Getting there." He corrected. "Do me a favor and grab the thinner of the two bottles in the bags on my sparrow?" He requested.

"Already on it." Agama said drifting in, and dropping the bottle with a small "Thunk" on the grass next to Castide.

"Oh Aggy." Castide said as he dumped the contents of his mug.

"You are the best." He said, admiring the liquid gently sloshing around and running a thumb over the green spot on the faded label.

Brexley stood and dusted herself off.

"Well, be carful of the hangover." She advised.

"Eh? That's for organic brains." He said waving her off.

Brexley's gaze lingered on the shard's dull glow mixing with the sunset before starting to return to her tent. She looked down when Pallowa softly head-butted her thigh. The big cat looked up at her and chuffed before padding across the grass and leaning against Castide. Agama floating near, her strange appendages seemingly wafting in the breeze.

"You always end up surrounded by the strange ones Miss Shaan." She whispered to herself.

"Well…?" Agama asked after Brexley left earshot.

"Well, what?" Castide stopped pouring his drink and looked up at Agama.

"About Brexley." She spun down to look at him eye level.

Castide set his mug down. "About Brexley… _WHAT?"_ He said widening his eye in a mocking manner.

"About having a regular fireteam. What do you think?" She asked.

Castide sighed. "So that's all that was." He said running hand over Pallowa's head.

"Was there something else that I wasn't aware of?" Agama replied.

Castide looked at her with feigned suspicion.

"For a second there I thought Kreth roped you into one of her "Experiments"." He said.

"No, no, no. She assured me that she had no ulterior motives, and that she was worried that your _lone wolf_ tendencies may cause you harm in the future…" She caught Castide's knowing look.

"I've been duped, haven't I?" She asked.

"Not entirely, she does worry about us alot. Although you can be sure she has ulterior motives." Castide sipped from his mug.

"The woman can't cook breakfast without planning dinner."

"Mmrphh." Pallowa uttered nosing through Castide's satchel.

"We'll get you some snacks tomorrow buddy, until then go catch a rabbit." Castide ruffled the large cat's fur between his ears. He looked back to see Krethlynn's form accost Brexley's.

" _What's the game this time kiddo?"_ He thought to himself, pulling the cork out of the bottle with a squeak and a pop.

"How did it go?" Krethlynn asked popping up behind Brexley, hand poised over her data pad as if about to take notes.

Brexley was halfway through unzipping her tent when startled by Krethlynn's question.

"What the fuck Kreth!? How did what go?" She looked around. "Where did you come from!?"

"Are you going join his team, or… whatever it is when you guardians find kindred spirits to fight with?... Together?... With whom you fight alongside?" Krethlynn asked.

"We didn't talk about it. We talked about Hearthwall and stuff." Brexley replied, shaking her head at her friend's antics.

"Uh-huh." Krethlynn said tapping away at the data pad.

"so, nothing about forming a fireteam?" she added.

"None whatsoever." Brexley replied.

Krethlynn paused and considered Brexley's eyes with newfound intensity.

"Did you at any point feel any non-guardian-duty related connection? Any feelings that can be regarded as maternal, or paternal, resonating from either party? Any tension that can be described as romantic, primal, or sexual?" She rattled off.

Brexley stared blankly at her friend, feeling warmth rise on her face.

"I'm going to bed." She said stepping into, and zipping her tent closed.

"I'm recording that response as a potential affirmative." Krethlynn said opening her own tent.

Brexley popped her head out to glare at her.

Krethlynn stuck her tongue out at Brexley and ducked into her own tent.

Castide pulled on his jacket and checked the straps connecting his armor to his harness. Pulling on his gloves and snapping on plasteel vambraces, feeling the armor auto-cinch tighter to his frame.

"Well that's old fashioned." Brexley lilted as she walked up to the birth of his ship.

He strapped on the leather holsters to his harness and pulled his cloak off a shelf.

"Morning, Brex." He said without looking up.

He looked down at her from position from inside his ship, noticing her fixation on his holsters.

"I like carrying the weight, and Pallowa brings me enough dead animals to clothe half the city." He said.

"Fair enough." She said leaning against the frame of the open bay door.

"So, you're just gearing up to make breakfast or what?" She asked.

"Word is, some jackass got their light back by hitting up that shard, plus this damn dream I had that showed it as is, picture perfect. So, I thought I might scout it out a bit." He said lowering his sparrow from its bay and letting it slide down the ramp into the grass.

"Not my style to dust up a place if I don't need to."

"Yeah, I know that dream…" she said shifting her weight a bit.

"W-Want some company?" She asked, trying to sound more confident than what actually came out of her mouth.

"If you're offering, another pair eyes couldn't hurt." He said ignoring her obvious stutter.

"Got sparrow access?" He asked.

"Ah, my sparrow is with my ship…" She replied.

"And your ship is…" He lead.

"A crater on the west side of the city." She followed with, defeated.

"What's your armament?" He asked warily.

Brexley pulled out and back the right side of her tattered robes, revealing her shotgun cinched up under her arm, and a sidearm holstered to her thigh.

"Just what got me out of the city."

Castide's vision narrowed a bit at her motions, quickly inspecting the weapons she had, his gaze tracing along the curves of her body armor.

"Hmm." He grunted, catching himself staring, and looking away.

"Let's get you kitted out then shall we?"

He moved to a rolling door locker opposite him, keying in a passcode the number pad. The door whisked up revealing a rotating rack containing row upon row of rifles and shotguns, braces of handguns, and the bottom of the locker littered with categorized ammunition synths.

"Take your pick." He said waving at the arsenal.

Brexley's eyes widened as she stepped up to the venerable trove of weaponry.

"So, I can just take what I want?" she asked, unfamiliar with the generosity he was showing.

"Yes, I am allowing you access to my precious horde, take whatever is going to help you round out your gear, or makes your heart all a flutter." Castide replied.

"Nice to know the powers that be still haven't rescinded their ban on trading gear." He grumbled.

"What's in there?" Brexley asked tapping a munitions crate with her boot under the armor rack.

Castide glanced over his shoulder from loading magazines into his harness.

"Ah, _that_." He said.

"A little thing we picked up from Agamemnon."

"Agamemnon?" She asked eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, a golden-age warmind production facility, we fff…" He started.

"Uhh, you didn't hear that." He finished.

"Warmind. Production. Facility." Brexley stepped forwards with each word.

"What happened?" She asked.

"It uh… It blew up." He answered.

"You…" She started.

"Blew it up. Yes." He finished for her.

"Why would you…" She started to exclaim.

"Fallen house took over the facility half-way through our ah… investigation." He said, tapping his horn.

"Only option we had, other than letting some new Siva crises pop up, was to..." He brought both hands together and quickly back out, mimicking an explosion.

"You two just might be the luckiest… or unluckiest of us all." Brexley sighed, opening the case discovering some broken-down rifle components and a barrel assembly taking up three feet of the cases interior.

"I think I'll take this." She said with a smirk. She set about assembling the machine, twisting and locking in receiver to firing chamber, receiver to stock, barrels to firing chamber.

"Looks more like a new light machine gun than a sniper rifle…" Brexley muttered, brandishing the rifle, nearly as long as she was tall, three rotating barrels ahead of a slightly modified bulky sniper receiver, smoothly conforming into the L-shaped stock.

"Maybe a bit too _new_ looking" She said turning it back and forth in her hands.

She knelt down and tore the hem of her robes, then threading the fabric around and through the barrels. She wrapped the body with the excess cloth torn from the barrels, tying it off neatly around the stock. She inspected the safety and the odd toggle inset on the grip just behind the trigger, switched it forward and barrels spun to life with a whisper.

She sighted the weapon aiming it down river.

"Incredibly light and the barrel rotation doesn't offset any quick movements." She observed aloud, quickly jerking her aim as the barrels spun.

"Seems to have an internal gyro system to counteract the barrel rotation." Dexter said, quickly scanning the machine.

Castide Procured a small item from the secondary locker and tossed it to Brexley.

"Here, cherry on top." He quipped.

Brexley caught the item recognizing it instantly and snapped it into place along the spine of the rifle.

"It should auto-zero the first time you fire it, and the scope snaps aside for things that get too close." He added.

Brexley tested the function, the lens system smoothly swinging down to the side of the rifle as a two-tiered reticle popped up in its place.

"Cool…" She chuckled.

"I've taken the liberty of modding some heavy ammunition synthesis for it. They're in your satchel." Dexter chimed in.

Brexley switched off the barrels and slammed in a larger than normal magazine she pulled out of bag at the small of her back. She pulled back the charging lever and let it snap back with a heavy, satisfying sound.

"looks like a good fit. Gonna name it?" Castide asked, arms crossed, looking at her with admiration.

"Is it mine to name?" she asked with a crooked grin.

"Sure, I got Betsy anyways." He said, casually jabbing his thumb towards the gun lashed to his sparrow's stabilizer frame.

Brexley surveyed her surroundings.

She studied Agama's shell with it's six-inch spike and harpy-like whips constantly testing the air, no doubt taken from a defeated Vex.

She took in Castide's ship with camo netting stretched across it's hull, the weld lines still visible in areas, and its massive gun jutting out from the bottom it's nose.

Then she turned to lines of tents, the makeshift rally point across the river from their camp, then back to Castide as he donned his helmet with those sneering fangs etched onto his faceplate.

"How about "The Barbarian"?" She asked, the question coming out more as a statement.

Castide laughed and extended the saddle on his sparrow.

"Fitting name. Is that a dig?" He said revving its turbines.

"More of a warning." She said playfully, hiding her grim expression by snapping her helmet shut over her short black hair.

"Got room for one more." He said, mounting the mottled gray sparrow.

Brexley slung her new rifle 'round her back before stepping onto the secondary pegs of the hovering sparrow and sliding on behind him, wrapping an arm around his torso.

"Don't get any ideas. This isn't quite what I'd call a date worthy outing." She said.

"I won't be gettin' fresh with ya." Castide chided.

"I don't know how you'd expect that aspect from a tin can."

"That was a terrible pun." Brexley groaned.

"That's the point, puns are terrible." He chuckled back.

Agama swooped into the saddlebag and Dexter dematerialized from the air.

He twisted the throttle and they sped off towards the shard, kicking up ten feet of spray as they crossed the river.

"Have fun stormin' the castle." Krethlynn said to herself from her perch atop Castide's ship.

She watched them slowly disappear from sight and went back to her data pad, humming amusedly, tunelessly.


	6. False Footsteps And High Octane

Chapter 6: False Footsteps

Brexley screamed wrapping her arms tighter around Castide's body. Her eyes screwed shut tightly, and her breathing came panicked and shallow. She opened one eye and saw Castide tighten his grip. Both of her eyes widened at the sight, and slammed back shut. Her stomach dropped, and her hands frantically grasped his chest for a solid hold, she screamed once more.

"What is she saying?" Castide asked as they careened along a near vertical cliff-face encompassing a century old sink-hole, launching off the bank and rotating slightly in air to catch the following escarpment, riding it down to the riverbed below the highway.

"You're going too fast.", "That's a dead end", "What the hell?", "Is this thing one of Holliday's projects?", "Did you just run over a bunny?" the responses from Agama pipped up in rapid sequence on his visor.

They passed under a rusted-out road sign and Castide let off the throttle slowing to a more moderate cruising speed. He felt Brexley's grip loosen from his frame, and her body lean back away from him.

"You do know that when we die now, we die for good!" She was still yelling.

"All that time working for Ikora, and _my driving_ freaks you out?" Castide's calm question came through in her helmet comms.

"For your information, I only worked with her for initial training and the random sortie here and there." She replied, quickly checking to make sure all her belongings were where they should be. "My adventures mainly consisted of running bounties to gather enough glimmer for nice place in a quiet neighborhood in city south." She said.

"Nothing wrong with the quiet life." Said Castide.

"So much for that…" Brexley said subdued, her neck angled to look up at the towering shard.

Castide cornered sharply angled up a small trail that ran uphill towards the shard. Castide toggled a control, killing the turbines and letting the machine's hover and inertia, glide them silently to the crest of the rise.

"Smooth." Brexley whispered. She stood straight up on the pegs of the sparrow and took a step backwards, her boots meeting the forest floor with a small thump.

"I'm so happy you're not a titan." Castide commented, dismounting.

"No love for our heavily armored friends?" She asked un-slinging The Barbarian.

"Just not while scouting…" He pulled his hood over his helmet and paused. "Unless it was Boros, that guy could sneak up on an over-caffeinated cat wearing Saladin's bells as armor." He said pulling two cloth rolls from one of his saddlebags.

"Which would be a feat for any titan on the wall." He continued tossing her one of the rolls.

"But with Boros, on account of his size, you'd have an easier time believing the Traveler tap-dances." He finished, unrolling the camo net and draping it across the sparrow.

"Bigger than Shaxx?" Brexley inquired, unrolling the package Castide tossed her, revealing an assortment of blades slotted and strapped into leather backing.

" _You have got to be kidding me."_ She thought as the roll hit the ground.

"Head and half taller." Castide said, strapping a scabbard to the small of his back. "Wide enough he has to step through doors sideways, _without his armor._ " He emphasized.

"Think he got caught up in this mess?" She said waving her hand above her head.

She had the knife roll laid out on the ground, and decided on a thick crooked blade. "He doesn't sound the type to just get steamrolled like the rest of us were." She said testing the edge of her choice.

"Nah." Castide replied hefting an old vanguard issue scout rifle, and fitting a suppressor to its muzzle.

"Do you bring an arsenal everywhere you go?" Dex asked in an incredulous tone.

"Met up with him a few years ago in the reef. He ah… hit it off with one of the queen's guard, so I'm pretty sure he's still there." He said ignoring Dex.

Agama came in over the crest of the hill they were on, her shell now mottled green and brown.

"Looks clear. Small group of fallen holed up in a cave just west of where we're going, but other than that." She said "Nothing."

"Aww, now you're all dressed up with no one to dance with." Dex said, his sarcasm on full.

"Wouldn't it be more helpful of you to self-modify yourself a muzzle?" Agama hit back.

"I can shut him up." Castide said casually towards the ghost, his face inscrutable behind his helmet.

"Dex." Brexley groaned.

"I thought you guys liked one-liners?" Dex asked earnestly, looking at everyone in turn.

Castide laughed and turned to head over the hill with Agama following close.

"Let's go mister personality." Brexley said to him as she jogged up the hill.

They crested the hill finding themselves on top of a building built into the hillside. Castide moved along the edge of the corrugated metal roofing scanning the open valley below, while Brexley a few yards behind, sweeping the distant tree line. Castide dropped off the roof of the covered bridge they were crossing, gripping the awning as he fell, swinging back in to land noiselessly on the catwalk. Switching his rifle to a left-handed grip and covering the windows long his path, disturbing a flock of pigeons roosting there.

"Nothing?" Brexley's voice chirped in his helmet.

"Just some rat-birds, their cooing sounds like dregs giggling over some bauble." His response popping up inside her helmet as text, with a small caricature of Castide's glowering face next to it.

"I modified your helmet to use our communication system we devised" Agama's text pipped up below Castide's, again with the little cartoon image of her shell.

"We use it when we need to be especially quiet. Just touch up under either side of your jawline and whisper, my algorithm will do they rest. If you feel you need to say something privately just say the name of the person before anything else, and only they will receive the message."

"Get the gist of it?" Castide's words popping up after.

"Pretty neat trick, but what's with the…" Brexley started.

"DON'T MENTION THE PICTURES!" Agama's urgent text interrupting her.

Brexley stifled a laugh stepping off the building onto a rust-sheathed vehicle, and then into the tall grass surrounding it. Castide fell into stride along side her as they made their way across an open field. They walked in silence with weapons at the ready, Brexley's boots rhythmically swishing through the grass stalks, a small crunch finalizing each step. When it dawned on her that her footsteps were the only ones she was hearing, she snapped her gaze to Castide's position only to find him gliding along right with her, even his cloak trailing him along the blades of grass was silent.

"How do you do that?" She touched her neck and whispered, testing the comms device.

"Do what?" His message replied.

"Never mind." She messaged back.

They passed by an apartment building overgrown with nature's reclamation, it's old tenants gone, it's new tenants huddled in nests and burrows, watching the trespassers with wary glowing eyes. They passed the deteriorating building and ventured deeper into the wilderness, the air became heavy with an eerie luminescent fog, the plant life becoming increasingly more twisted the further they traveled. The mid-morning sun fading as it as it fails to break through the oppressive aura surrounding the shard.

"I feel something." Dex said aloud.

"I don't…" Agama started.

"This way!" Dex said shooting off low to the ground, kicking up dust and slapping through leaves.

"Damnit Dex!" Brexley ran off trailing him, cursing him as she hurried.

"False alarm, or trap?" Agama asked Castide.

"If you don't sense anything, then there's probably nothing here for us." Castide replied, pulling his hood back and snapping off his helmet.

"The light has always been a bit wonky with us." He clipped the helmet to his belt and trudged forward.

"Just the way you use it, is _wonky_." Agama muttered.

They walked into clearing to see Brexley standing before a section of the massive remnant with Dex flitting about excitedly. Brexley removed her helmet and turned to Castide, smiling sweetly.

"We were waiting for you!" She called out to Castide.

"Still nothing?" Castide whispered to Agama.

"Nada." She whispered back.

Castide approached Brexley placing his hand on her back and pushing her towards the shard.

"Go on then, Brex." He said.

"Cas…" She started.

"Go." He said flatly, sliding his thumbs into his belt

Brexley looked at him with a slightly pained look and opened her mouth to say something.

"Brexley! You're going to love this!" Dex exclaimed, cutting her short.

Brexley turned to Dex as he started funneling light. She felt white hot envelope her body, as her feet left the ground. She inhaled sharply as she felt herself rise, curling her fingers in as power surged through her body. She felt her strength return, not her normal strength, but the inexorable strength that she had grown so accustomed to over the years since her revival. She fell to the ground with her light restored.

She turned to Castide, confidence brimming from her entire being.

"It's back!" She said beaming.

"you're turn." She enthused grabbing wrists, pulling him towards the shards wall.

"Brex, please…" Castide protested, limply following along.

Brexley pressed his hands against the shard and waited. After several moments her expression drooped, and she turned to him.

"What's going on, does Agama need to be the one, or…" She asked before Castide cut her off.

"There's nothing for us here Brex." He said.

"Agama never felt anything the moment we came here. Not like Dex. We've never…" He explained.

"Never had a good connection to the light. Best I can figure, anyways…" Castide pulled his arms back and moved away

"The broken one, one, one." An unfamiliar voice said ringing it Castide's receptors.

Castide stopped snapping his head back and forth looking for the origin of the voice.

"Cas that's not true. We can figure out a way to…." Brexley's voice faded as Castide lost consciousness.

Castide's body fell to his knees, the soft green glow of his eye flickering out, his body frozen in an attempt to console his companion.

"Agama you…" Brexley said turning in time to see the ghost fall out of the air, her glowing eye blank and as dark as a moonless night, tumbling through the dirt to lay at her companion's side. Brexley stood and looked to her own ghost with a face of disbelief.

"This is not good." Dex said as a matter of fact.

Rain started fall, a few drops at first, quickly becoming a downpour. Brexley brought her hand to Castide's face.

"They're not dead at least." Dex said after a quick scan

"We're not leaving them." She said decidedly, scooping up Agama's shell and pulling out her field kit.

Brexley set to work setting up camp, checking Castide and the ghost in her pocket for signs of life, every so often.


	7. Camp-outs And Blackouts

Chapter 7

Castide looked to the tower in the distance, dark and imposing. The sun behind it either setting or rising, burned dark orange casting a warm red hue on the otherwise chilly, barren landscape.

"Ah, this again." His voice came as gravel.

His hands felt slick.

Exos rarely spoke of the dream, for it was commonly experienced during the strenuous moment of adding on to the tally that served as their surname. Rebooting, a half death, reshuffling the cards so to speak. Occasionally it was experienced during the sleep cycle most exos allowed themselves. Their tales revealed content varying from war and peace, to horror and comedy, and whimsical to the absurd. For Castide it was always the same, minus one caveat.

He gripped the knife in his hand.

The same tower, the same ever-burning red sun, the same knife in his grip. Only one thing ever changed in his dream, one thing he always hoped never changed. He turned away from the tower.

"Ah there she is." He whispered weakly.

He looked down at Brexley's body splayed out before him, her mouth slightly parted, her eyes staring into the sky above her. Her throat slit, and her body opened like a pig's carcass in a butcher's window. Blood spread out from her body, mockingly taking she shape of broken wings.

He felt sick but lumbered on, taking in the sights of the dream that always, and never changes. Gentle Boros, his great hulking body lay broken across a boulder his limbs spread out in impossible angles. Little Krethlynn, her charred corpse kneeling, almost pleading. Noble Lanya, half her form seemingly erased from existence. He continued down the line taking in the views of his friends, acquaintances, and enemies. Some he hoped to see again outside of the dream, others he can only visit within the dream, for it is the only place their memory, despite how morbid, exists. Finally, he reached the destination he knew he'd come to. Himself long dead, covered in blood, gripping the same knife he now held and standing like some murderous monument.

"I'd like to wake up now." He muttered, pushing the body of himself over.

It shattered into billions of particles and blew away, wicking over the rocks and rubble.

"Not yet." A chorus of voices, masculine and feminine, young and elderly, reverberating and echoing over each other, spoke out to him.

Castide looked around, searching and failing to find the origin of the voice.

"Well that's new." He said.

Brexley pulled Castide's limp form into the cover of and old tree's root system.

"What's the plan?" Dex inquired.

"I don't know… We-well wait here for a day. Then I'll go get Kreth." She stammered.

"Just here? No one to guard him? Pretty much out in the open, all things considered." Dex reasoned.

"That's what I got you for. Right buddy?" She looked the ghost in the eye, pleadingly.

"I mean, we've got our light back, and it's only some short ways to the sparrow. I can be back with Kreth in no time." She finished.

"Make it two days." Dex suggested. "And leave Agama here. They have some sort of connection to the shard, and I would be loath to break it."

"Fair." Brexley confirmed. "Let's find a better hiding spot in the meantime."

"Indeed, this place is fine from the weather, but any interlopers would easily find him." Dex confirmed.

Castide's dream world fell out beneath him, replaced with a white room with no corners, Agama hovered next to him.

"Aggy?'" Castide observed her, pure white and missing her additions. He looked down to his body to see his armor gone, just his synth-skin with none of the patch-scars from old wounds. He looked brand new, He _felt_ brand new.

"Nice of you to join us." Agama said to him, her voice with a nervous caution to it.

"Us?"

He looked in the direction she motioned to find a feminine form sitting in the air before them. It's body almost vapor-like, but with hard definition. It's face, much like the rest of it lacked any definition, less the two sapphire eyes regarding the two of them like errant children.

The being moved through the air towards them, circling them slowly, it's eyes roaming over their forms, examining them.

"Broken the both of you." It spoke with the chorus of voices.

"The first of my touch, the first of my progeny to fall." The being finished.

"Who are you?" Castide asked.

"You know who I am, first of the touched." The being replied.

"The little one as well" It said, tracing her shell with its ghostly hand

"Why are we here." Agama asked.

"To fix you, child, first of your kind." The being replied.

"The traveler…" Castide realized.

"Quicker than quick you are." It said, seemingly smiling at him.

"Not wholly though, I am but a fragment, woken by the call sent to you and the rest."

"What do you mean by broken?" Castide asked.

The traveler's avatar regarded him knowingly.

"Your light was tainted, never quite suited you?" It asked, eyes playful.

"Skills you don't recall learning, things you know that no one else does, muddied memories that haunt you?"

Castide folded his arms and looked at the avatar.

"You can fix that?" He asked.

The avatar sadly shook its head.

"It is damage I cannot undo with my power, in tota;l but I can help you understand, and perhaps set you on a path." It raised its hand, one finger pointed skyward. "For now, let's return your gift, and fix that throttle keeping you from your full potential."

" _Full_ potential!?" Agama gasped, looking at Castide

Castide looked to her and shrugged.

The avatar spread its arms, glowing brighter and brighter, moved towards Castide.

"I have a feeling this might hurt." He mumbled.

Krethlynn studied Castide's prone form in the camouflaged tent, with scattered devices strewn about, his armor and jacket neatly set aside. She rocked back and folded her legs beneath her, holding her chin in her palm and tapping a stylus against her thigh. In all the time that she knew Castide, the closest he ever let her get to studying him was riding on his shoulders through the market square as a child. It was when she first noticed he was a bit different from the other exos. While most exos seemed like you could take them apart if you had the right tools, Castide on the other hand seemed more complex, streamlined, sinuous. Now that she had him here, the proof of what she always suspected was now catalogued. Her only dilemma now was if she should record it or keep it to herself.

"How is he?" Brexley called from outside.

"It's been almost a week, there should be some kind of change." She could hear Dex mutter.

Krethlynn opened the tent and crawled out, then standing and stretching. "He's fine, just unconscious or whatever that is" She said waving at him dismissively.

" _Whatever that is?"_ Brexley repeated, mocking her wave.

"Your bland little partner said there was a connection that might be compromised if we moved him too far from this place. Which is why you dragged me out here, by the way you drive like my mother, so yes. _Whatever that is._ " Kreth explained.

"He's… Communing with the eggshell." She gesticulated towards the shard.

Brexley walked over to the tent and kneeled looking in. She had seen partially disrobed exos before, all had varying types of make ups to them, but she hadn't seen anything quite like Castide's. No plating on his hands, forearms, or shoulders. Just the smooth synthetic skin, that upon closer inspection, looked woven with differing intensities, that seemed to emphasize his musculature.

"This is an inappropriate time to relieve your frustrations with him." Krethlynn said to her teasingly, raising an eyebrow.

Brexley rolled her eyes and turned to glare at her friend. "I was just noticing that there's something… I don't know. Odd about him." She explained. "It's not like exos walk around in the buff everywhere."

"Don't you guardians have a locker room for after missions? High-fiving and whipping each other with towels or whatnot?" Krethlynn asked not looking up from the samples she was collecting.

"Of course not!" Brexley objected. "Well… Maybe the titans do, but we use our private quarters, and I'm pretty sure the hunters just don't shower." She added.

"Well you're right about him being an oddity." Krethlynn said, continuing the subject. "His _skin_ acts like a secondary musculature system, its weave contains sensory strands that are quadruple layered every third micron. He could probably feel the air pressure change of an incoming bullet before it hits him. His skeletal system is a high tensile form of plasteel that I'm not sure we can recreate. While he doesn't have the organs we have, he does have conversion modules that turns the air he breathes and whatever he eats or drink into fuel for the tiny reactor, also something that we won't be able replicate, that powers him. And it beats! Go put your ear to his chest you can hear it!" Krethlynn's dialogue accelerated as she described the technology.

"He is a living marvel of golden age tech, he makes other exos look like frames. There's hints that remind me of siva, and I'm still trying to figure out why he HAS a metabolism, but its all just way so…" She paused and sighed.

"So?" Brexley asked cautiously

"Human, Brex." Krethlynn answered. "I need to study more exos, too see how much Cas differs from them. To see if…" She rambled on muttering to herself.

Brexley turned back to look at Castide in the tent. "Uh… Kreth?"

Castide's body was hovering a few inches in the air and a shimmer of light started to pulse over him.

"Kreth!?" Brexley raised her voice, never taking her eyes of Castide. Her friend prattling on.

"Krethlynn!" She shouted. Krethlynn spun around in time to see the energy build up around Castide's body, throwing off the attachments of her monitoring tools. Its crescendo came with a _whoomph_ as a shockwave blew out the tent supports, knocking over Brexley, and disturbing the plant life in a small radius around Castide.

A distant surprised roar echoed from off in the distance. Brexley and Krethlynn looked towards the sound, then at each other.

"Shit!" Dex said swerving around the campsite, starting to trans-mat their equipment.

Brexley grabbed the Barbarian and tossed her shotgun to Krethlynn.

"Remember how to use that? She asked.

"I don't forget anything Brex." She replied, cocking the gun.

Castide crumpled to the ground, the touch he felt from the avatar caused enough pain to leave him breathless. Instead of feeling drained and weak, he felt quite the opposite, in fact he felt better than he ever remembered.

"It feels strange doesn't it?" Agama asked. "Like I've been half asleep my whole existence and now…"

"Why?" Castide asked the avatar. "I've never felt this before."

"You were cut down, the both of you, when she was bestowing my gift. It left you broken and it left her stunted." The avatar spoke. "You were the first of them Agama, and he was your choice."

"What happened?" Agama asked.

"That I do not know. The rest of myself may know, for I only have echoes." It answered. "I can give you a direction, but you must find your own way." The avatar moved towards him with a hand outstretched, letting one of its fingers rest on his forehead. "This is all the knowledge I can give you. I'm sorry."

Castide started to protest but thought better of it. "Never mind." He said to the avatars curious expression. "I'm not going to remember any of this, am I?". The avatar's eyes smiling as his vision faded.

Brexley glided to a rocky outcropping overlooking the valley and as luck would have it, a partial view of the road they traveled. She sighted her rifle. As she did so a bi-pod unfolded from the frame of the weapon just forward of her grip, each leg extending to the ground with a barely audible hiss.

"Neat." She whispered to herself.

Her aim slid along the roadway, backtracking their route until she came upon the apartments and small crumbling building that stood like sentinels on the way to their camp. Everything was still, no breeze, no birds. " _Ah there they are."_ She thought to herself as flock of black shadows left the roof of the apartment building. She followed the birds for a moment before snapping back to what disturbed them. Three dead dregs lay spread out on the building's topside exterior, the perpetrators, sifting about the remains of their victims.

"Psions, looks like that red legion everyone has been chattering about." Brexley voiced over the com-link to Krethlynn.

"And? Are they coming or not? My arms are getting tired." Krethlynn's voice crackled back.

Brexley's jaw clenched a little. "You don't have to constantly aim the…" She stopped herself. "Not yet, it looks like whatever happened to Cas spooked some fallen stragglers right into them."

A cabal harvester swung in low over the tree line opposite to her position, and she ducked back behind the bluff, lowering her profile. The dropship's engine mounts rotating smoothly, keeping it level as the bay doors swung open in succession. She sighted the first door through her scope as a centurion emerged surveying the area before turning its attention to psions atop the apartments, inclining its head in small movements.

"Barking orders eh?" Brexley whispered as her sight slid back to the psions. One of them stood up and gestured an arm towards the direction of the path leading to the shard. "They were running from something scary." She mocked in a whiny voice, sliding back to the centurion. "Good job puny ones, we shall investigate this scary thing." She lowered her tone mimicking the centurion. She watched as three other centurions and two phalanxes dropped from the harvester landing heavily, followed by the one barking at the psions. Rain started to fall as lightning flashed in the distance. "Lucky me." She whispered to herself, as her cross-hairs came in line with one of the psions. She squeezed the trigger as thunder rolled over the area.

Castide found himself in a half-collapsed tent, he turned his head in time to see Agama's eye flicker on, her tendrils stuttering back into motion. His head was throbbing like Shaxx and Boros used it for volleyball practice.

"Is this what a hangover feels like? Agama asked. The top quadrant of her shell tilted forward over her eye.

"Only worse, I mean… I'm not sure, but I know this feels worse." He answered. "Why am I naked? Why are we in a tent?" He sat up looking around, the pounding in his head lessening.

"I don't know the last thing I remember is that voice." Agama said rising off the ground.

Castide looked around and saw the scattered equipment. He lifted the collapsed portion of the tent to see his armor and clothes neatly folded with his weapons placed on top.

"Krethlynn Adelaide Vale!" He shouted.

Krethlynn dropped the shotgun and spun around clasping her hands behind her back.

"He's awaaake." She demurely and quietly sang into her comms.


	8. CH8 Sofia And Her Dog

Chapter 8

…

Castide laughed internally at the sight in front of him. Krethlynn stood in front of him, head down with her hands behind her back. Reminding him of those years ago when her father marched her in front of him when he returned from a crucible match, holding a dismantled thruster assembly from a sparrow, _His sparrow's thruster._ Her father, Dagen Vale, found her rooting around in Castide's ship after showing her around the tower one day and lost track of her, finding her in his ship, parts littered around her under the watchful gaze of a slightly smaller Pallowa.

"Never change Kreth." Castide continued to dress and reassemble his gear.

"You're not mad?" She looked at him as if he morphed into a potato.

"I'm just thankful I'm not in multiple pieces." He winked at her. "So, what happened?"

"You were dead essentially, at least as dead as exos go. All systems shut down, no synaptic response, no "brain" waves either. Just a lump of synthetic flesh."

"How long was I out? Seems like a few hours." He said.

"You were out for a little over a week." Krethlynn said slowly.

Castide paused, looking up to the towering shard. "That long for nothing?" he said aloud. _"it wasn't nothing then was it?"_ He thought.

"For nothing? You were out for a week and you have nothing to show for it?" Krethlynn walked over to him tapping at her data-pad "I don't think so, here look at this." She continued, handing him the pad. "Every guardian has a unique wavelength attributed to their light. The waveform on the left is yours four days ago, Brex's is on the right for reference."

Castide examined the images on the screen. On the right, Brexley's waveform was two concentric circles with overlaying curved lines undulating and crossing over each other, creating an odd geometry as they intersected. His on the other hand might as well have been flatlined.

Krethlynn snatched the pad back, pulling up another diagram. "And this is you now." She handed it back. What Castide saw didn't make sense, there were no curves and that odd geometry, was more defined. "Still say nothing happened?" Krethlynn asked with worried eyes.

"Can't remember." He replied, closing his eyes. He dipped his hand into the light feeling the unrelenting burn of the solar energy, the chaotic maelstrom of arc energy, the incredible heaviness that is the void, And something else. Something dark and writhing. The more he tried to hold onto it the quicker it slipped from his grasp. "I don't think I was supposed to." He said with a wink, thunder booming overhead.

The psion's head exploded, sending its body tumbling with such force it crumpled the rampart of the apartments roof. The second psion spun round quickly taking in the fate of its comrade and immediately scanning for the source of its demise, failing to notice the energetic reaction happening to the corpse.

"Holy shit!" Brexley exclaimed. The body of the recently dispatched psion throbbed with energy and exploded, sending its partner flailing off the roof to land in a crumpled heap and the base of the building, oozing black liquid from the seams in its armor. The larger of the four centurions stopping in front of the body, firstly looking up to the building and then to the general direction of Brexley's position.

"Shit." Brexley swore.

"He's awaaake." Krethlynn's voice sang into her helmet.

"SHIT." She reiterated more forcefully. "Goddamned giving me firefly rounds!" Pulling the magazine out "In an untested!" pulling out and slamming in a drum magazine. "Golden-age gunsmith's!" She racked the charging handle. "Pet-fucking-project!" She flipped the toggle on the grip and the barrels began to spin to life. "And _now_ you wake up."

"Brexley, I won't comment on our friends use of illegal ammunition, but I did just notice something about your rifle." Dex interjected, his voice resounding in her helmet.

"What!" She said taking aim.

"That rifle enhances whatever type of ammunition loaded into it. So, you might want to…" He answered.

"Perfect." She cut him off, her voice husky and grim. The two phalanxes of the squad moved forward, extending their shields to defend in her general direction. She slapped the scope to the side and a holographic aperture popped up in it's place. The spinning barrels hummed a high pitch whine as she squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked in tight repetition against her as she leaned into the weapon, keeping the erratic dance of the red dot in the aperture focused on the front line of the group.

The second of the phalanxes looked to its compatriot, watching with confidence as the hail spattered impotently against his shield. His confidence turned to horror and rage as the continued onslaught methodically dismantled the shield and his comrade bearing it. He turned away from the spray of shattered armor and spraying viscera to open fire in the direction of the oncoming fire. He fired wildly from the bottom of the forest floor to the top of the precipice that jutted out amongst the trees. He glanced back to his comrade just in time to see the impacts making pulp a of his body, move like some explosive serpent towards him. He roared and focused his firing. He felt the impacts against his shield and moved his aim up along the incline. He felt his shield collapse as he raged further running his aim up to the out-cropping. His gun exploded in his hands, he felt the weight of his arm give way. He fell as his leg was erased from his senses. A sharp intense pain exploded below his neck, spinning his view of the world spinning, slowly stopping in time to see the rest of his body haphazardly dismantled.

The centurions scattered from the kill box, realizing from where the incoming fire was directed from. Brexley ejected the empty ammo box and slid in a fresh magazine and ejected her self off the out-cropping. Feeling the light once more invigorate her, she focused it around her waist and down her legs pushing her body against gravity. She glided down to the road running towards the shard, taking cover behind a concrete barricade.

"Is sleeping beauty up to snuff? Or do I have to face reinforcements alone?" She tested her nova bomb, letting it swell in her palm then snapping it closed, feeling the light diffuse back into her. She snapped the scope back into place and took aim towards where the centurions hunkered into cover. One foolishly peeked over the ancient vehicle he chose for cover. Brexley sighted and squeezed, feeling the rifle dig into her snapping her view through the sight up and back down to see the fool's head vaporize into a black mist, spraying the wall black.

"Just shaking out the cobwebs. Did you ride my sparrow? The seat feels wonky." Castide's voice crackled over her radio, bringing a smile to her face.

"I had to get Kreth and you're a little taller than I am." She said turning to the increasing turbine whine coming up behind her.

Castide came careening around the bend of the roadway on hand outstretched. "Oh, we're doing this?" Brexley asked slinging the rifle over her back and trotting towards the incoming sparrow. Their palms slapped on each other forearms and she swung smoothly, her feet landing precisely on the foot-pegs jutting out just behind the thrust exhaust. "Use it." He said jabbing a thumb at the rifle on his back. Brexley stood on the pegs gripping his hips with her knees, readying the scout rifle. "Centurions, two on the left, big boy on the right" She called out. Castide accelerated weaving amongst the antiquated vehicles. "Take the reins!" He shouted as they came upon the apartment building.

She leaned forward just as he moved to leap off the growling machine, her feet sliding into the stirrup controls with the machine's ground effect adjusting for Castide's weight leaving it. She angled the sparrow to drift around the low building on her left, surprising one of the centurions with several high caliber rounds. She leapt off the sparrow behind a berm that house a small strand of trees, letting the sparrow's inertia skip itself across the crossroads. The centurion's aim followed the now empty vehicle. He noticed too late, the occupant was no longer with it. He turned in time to watch his death come to him.

Castide hit the ground and slid, using his momentum to launch himself back upon his feet in a steady run. He veered a corner the Bastard in his left hand, his blade in his right. He came upon the larger than normal centurion, catching it by surprise he swung at it's legs sweeping the gargantuan creature off it's legs. Not missing a beat, the cabal leader fell to it's back just as he spun to slam the Bastard's bayonet into its throat, pulling the trigger as it drove in.

Brexley Sauntered up to Castide, tossing his rifle back into his ownership. "Not much of a score." Her demeanor jaunty and accomplished. "I guess I should give you a handicap, all things considered."

Two harvester drop-ships rose over the tree line and pressed forwards toward them. "Games not over yet." He sighed, tossing the rifle back across his shoulders "how many points are those worth?"

A crackling clap echoed throughout the clearing as Castide called upon the golden gun. He aimed at the oncoming harvesters, and to Brexley's confusion didn't fire. Instead he pulled the gun back, keeping his left arm forward and taut as if he was firing a bow. "What the hell are you…" Her words fell short as he watched him funnel void energy into the gun, elongating its barrel. Castide's body swarmed with the energies, the void snaking over his body eating up the blaze of the solar, which seemed to burn even hotter as a response. At once they seemed to be warring, the two convalesced into a steady burn feeding into the gravitas, and an odd silver-green shimmer where the two powers met.

Castide now held a rifle that blazed with energy feeding into a core of pure void, again with that dangerous green shimmer, sending shivers of anxiety over him. He looked to Brexley briefly, her expression inscrutable behind her mask, but her body language clearly indicating he had done something incredibly dangerous, or foolish. "Maybe both." He muttered to himself. He aimed and fired, the first shot sent him reeling and dropped him to a knee. The round seared through the air striking the first ship dead center on the nose.

For a split second nothing seemed to happen, then the ship started to crumple as if some invisible giant started to crush it between his hands. The central fuselage collapsed down to a certain point and exploded, sending the engine pylons spinning away from the central fireball. One pylon spun into a ditch kicking up mud and plant life with its sputtering thrusters, the second shot up and over slamming into the second harvester, exploding with enough force to send the second drop-ship into a lazy spiral, slamming belly-up into highway below, sliding to a stop a few yards from where Castide knelt.

"You have some explaining to do." Brexley said stepping to his side holding out a hand. He gripped it and let the rifle fade till it snapped out of existence as she helped him up.

"Luck." He replied. "I didn't expect taking out one ship would take out the other."

"Not _that. THAT!_ " She gestured to his empty right hand.

"Later, I'd have to find a book and learn how to explain it." He said, checking the load in the Third Ring. "In my head its "two plus two equals five", but I'm sure there's more to it than that."

"Uh-huh." She replied walking towards the smoking wreckage. The harvester may have been disabled but the occupants were not, as the hatches creaked open and a legionnaire tried to crawl out. She launched herself up to hover over the drop-ship and let the void light swell within her palms. "My turn." She breathed as she loosed a nova bomb, huge and slow moving enough to hear the roars and screams of protest inside the ship. It detonated with a _whoomph_ , vaporizing a section of hull and all life inside. Castide watched her waft back down landing on the aged asphalt, removing her helmet and running a hand through her short hair, her emerald eyes gleaming. "Feels good to be able to do that again." She smiled back at him.

"I can take a picture if you'd like." Agama said materializing next to him. "Also, you a have a communication coming through."

"From who?" Castide asked in a worried tone, noticeably unfazed by her prior comment.

"The one who only calls to ask us favors, or to see if we're interested in a wager." She replied.

"Put him though." Castide sighed in annoyance.

"Connecting in three." Agama said in her best robotic tone. "Took the picture anyway, you can thank me later." She buzzed off to converse with Brexley and inspect the wreckage.

"What do you want Cayde?" He said walking back to his sparrow.

"Heeey Cas! Long time no talky. What's been up buddy?" Cayde's came over the commlink in his helmet.

"Things that would make Tevis roll over in his grave." Castide said, toggling controls on the sparrow letting it whir back to life.

"You got your light back?" Cayde asked with bewilderment. "How are people dong this… you know what? Nevermind. The only thing that ever made Tevis roll was how much glimmer he lost. Anyways." Cayde continued. "A little bird told me you have a way into the city."

"I have more than one." Castide said.

"I bet you do. Well we got a plan, meet me at the farm and we can hash things out." Cayde said.

"And Zavala is okay with this?" Castide asked.

"Ol' big blue will be happy to see you… Pleased you're not dead… *ahem* Content you're willing to help?" Cayde reasoned.

"Castide out." He replied,

"See ya soon I hope." Cayde said as he cut the feed.

He saddled his sparrow and slowly rode it towards where Agama and Brexley were. "Got a request from the vanguard, well… from Cayde." He mentioned as he slid up to the two.

"But they listed you as renegade, why would they ask you for help?" Brexley said perplexed.

"Cayde is asking for help. Pretty sure Zavala didn't sanction this, and Ikora is only getting whispers of it now." Agama chimed in.

"Because the speaker is a sycophant. He studied the traveler and nothing else, exiled the one person who had the forethought to monitor one of the most prominent threats to the city… the world." Castide said. "I was listed as a renegade because I dared confront the newly mantled commander of the vanguard… for an outlying town of "smugglers and thieves"."

"So, were going?" Brexley asked, matter of factly.

"Aggy call the ship." Castide said coldly. "Get Kreth and Brex situated back at camp…And see if you can get a hold of Dane. I'll go ahead to see what the puppets want." He growled mounting his sparrow, gunning the turbines and speeding off into the wilderness.

"I think this is going to be good, ya know, _Cathartic_ in a way" Cayde-6 said to his fireteam.

"I don't like it, but I'll allow it, considering the circumstances." Zavala replied.

Ikora regarded the two for a moment and smiled.


	9. Chapter9: Puss 'n' Boots

Chapter 9

…

The constant whine of his sparrow's turbines cleared Castide's mind. The hissing rush of the vehicles wake calmed him.

"Vanguard." He grumbled punching the throttle forward, the displays pushing into red, the white plume behind him growing larger, the world around him blurring, and his irritation dwindling.

Too many years of being told where to go, what to do, what's important, what's _not_ important. Always _for the city_ , no, for the speaker. Andal had his head straight, never sanctioned anything that benefitted any one person unless the one person benefitting from it was the person doing the work. Zavala's heart is in the right place, but he's too myopic to consider the cloak and dagger methods some like to use. Cayde's a wild card and he knows it, and that's the problem, twenty different angles, no foresight or follow-through, the system's worst grifter. Ikora was the only one he could fully trust, he knew that the first time saw her eyes, over the barrel of that wicked shotgun in the crucible. Saint's gone, Osiris is gone, just too many gone.

"Pallowa isn't here." Agama's voice crackled on his radio.

"He probably was out skulking around when you brought the ship in." he replied speeding along the riverbend leading up to the farm. "check the tracker and…" Castide slowed as he came upon boulder jutting out of the water with a familiar black feline perched on it. "Never mind, I found him."

Castide angled to sparrow towards the rock and let the throttle die, letting the inertia glide him in. The large cat recognizing his friend, stood up chuffing at Castide and pacing in a slow small circle.

"Hey runt." Castide called as he turned his bird sideways, hovering up onto the boulder and stopping his momentum, and stepping off the sparrow. The large cat padded up to him as he knelt, softly headbutting his chest and nuzzling his neck, almost knocking Castide over. "Have a nice lunch?" Castide said, noticing the remains of several fish and scratching between the cat's ears. Castide called him "runt", despite Pallowa being quite the opposite. He found Pallowa on a scouting run near the cosmodrome, three dregs seemed to be incredibly curious over something at an old vanguard landing zone. So enraptured by what they saw, that Castide was able to walk right up behind them to peer over their shoulders and into the Tex Mechanica crate they huddled over. Three cowering cubs of varying shades except for one black fur ball, it stood facing the three giants with its back arched, ears laid back, claws out, and its pupils contracted into slits. Castide took a step back to survey the area, quickly scanning the area he spotted a grey lump, only visible as the breeze passed along the tall grass. "Hmm." He said aloud, the three dregs spun and were met with three individual barks from the Third Ring. Castide only saw the carnage he caused as he went to check the cubs, all were spattered with fallen blood and ether, three still cowering, and Pallowa still in defensive mode growling as low as he could, looking up to Castide with defiance.

Castide walked to the lump he spotted earlier, the litters mother. Puncture wounds with traces of arc energy singed the fur around them.

"Aggy?" he asked

"She's already gone Cas, but those babies, I can sense the traveler's touch on them, not gonna be normal kittes." She replied.

Castide buried her, collected the spent casings he used on the dregs, lashed them to one of his knives and stabbed it into the dirt at the top of the mound covering her body.

"this is all can offer you." He said to the mound of dirt. "I'll make sure they're okay."

Castide gave three of the cubs to people he knew would care for them, Einata Vale, Krethlynn's mother got one. Lanya-12 got one while Boros chose the actual runt, Vili if Castide remembered correctly.

"C'mon boy." He said as he pulled out webbing to strap across the sparrow's runners. "We gotta go play nice.

"So what kind of guy is he, and why is he keeping us waiting like this?" Suraya Hawthorne paced the deck of the barn

"A renegade, dangerous, and probably ignoring our request." Zavala grumbled

"Dangerous shmangerous. Ikora and Castide go way back in the crucible and she always had the drop on him, so we're good and Zavala won't be taking any unscheduled naps." Cayde said winking at Zavala.

"Cas is a guardian through and through. We ask for help, he'll do what he can, but he found his path outside of the vanguard and the consensus, I won't fault him for that." Ikora looked to Cayde and raised an eyebrow. "And you should know that more often than not, we _traded_ in our bouts. Last I remember he was still up by one."

Hawthorne regarded Zavala suspiciously. "You schedule naps?"

Cayde-6 laughed.

Castide approached the barn side-stepping small throngs of people. While most people gave Pallowa odd looks, he didn't catch any recognition. _"On the renegade list but not on the wanted list."_ He thought. He proceeded on his path towards the barn when he noticed Pallowa crouched near a low stone wall, eye's fixed, ears forwards and a slight tremor the muscles of his haunches. He followed the cat's gaze to few chickens milling around, scratching at the dirt.

"Hey." He said sternly. "Don't eat the birds."

The big cat chuffed and twitched its bob-tail in dejection, stood and caught up to Castide.

A low whine brought Castide's vision up to his ship coming in low over the trees and hovering above a makeshift staging area, its landing gear deploying as it slowly descended. He started towards when a large hand thumped heavily on his shoulder. He turned his head to find Lord Shaxx as the owner of the hand.

"Castide, its good to see you amongst the living." Shaxx rumbled.

Castide turned and grasped his forearm "It's good to see you here as well friend, not much of a surprise, but still." Castide grinned.

"Coming back to the fold? I would love to have you back thickening the skin of these whelps once all this is finished." Shaxx inquired.

"I'm afraid not, I still have some stones to kick over that I'd rather not be hen-pecked about night and day." Castide shook his head slowly. "Cayde asked for a favor. I'm going to see what he needs, help out if I can."

"Well I won't keep you then, but come see me before you leave, your gear looks a little threadbare. I won't have one of my heavy hitters traipsing about in rags." Shaxx rumbled.

Brexley walked up to the two, nervously glancing between them "Everything okay here?"

Shaxx and Castide both turned to regard her "Everything is fine Brex." Castide chuckled

"Were old friends actually." Shaxx said, amused. "Bring her along as well. You both are in absolute tatters. The Vanguard is in the farmhouse." He patted Pallowa's flank and turned to head ack into the barn.

"Heavy hitter?" Brexley raised an eyebrow to Castide "I'm gonna have to look up your stats. Agama is in the ship trying to raise Dane, Kreth ran off to chat with the cryptarch over there." She paused to look down at her raiment. "We do look like something the cat dragged in."

"Presentable enough for the Vanguard." Castide stated

They walked into the farmhouse Shaxx directed them to. Castide entered first and saw Zavala standing looking over Ikora's shoulder at a terminal screen, Cayde leaning against a table holding a chicken, and one other whom Castide never met before with a falcon perched near her.

"I never knew you to be the pet type cayde." Castide said calmly snapping everyone's attention to him, and literally ruffling a few feathers.

"How do you do that?" Cayde exclaimed, the chicken fluttering to the ground. "Sneaky son of a…" Cayde shook his head and stepped up to Castide. "Didn't know if you'd show up or not."

"I felt I might owe you one, and if not, now you can owe me." Castide said tilting his head to look past him. "Hello Ikora, good to see you."

"You as well." She said with that knowing gaze.

"Castide." Zavala said grimly, folding his arms.

"Hey blue, how's the jaw?" Castide asked.

"This is Suraya Hawthorne." Zavala indicating the person he didn't know.

"And this is Louis." Hawthorne added, gesturing towards the falcon.

"Nice poncho." Castide said to her. "Don't worry about the bird. _He_ just ate."

"Who just ate?" Hawthorne asked as Pallowa leaped up onto the table next to Cayde, startling everyone except Zavala and Ikora.

"This is Brexley Shaan." Castide introduced her as she walked through the door. "Part of my fireteam."

"Yeah I bet she is." Cayde murmured slowly, appraising her, his eyes lingering on the rifle slung over her shoulder

Brexley flushed at the inquisitive looks she was receiving, more so at Ikora's expression, like she suspected and now her suspicions were confirmed. "Cas got me out of the city and he's not as much of a hooligan as most hunters are." She rapped his shoulder with her knuckles and moved next to the table and began scratching between Pallowa's ears, eliciting a low steady purr from the beast.

A small static crackle erupted from Castide's helmet clipped to his belt. "Acme to coyote, come in coyote." A tinny voice came in from the helmet. Castide paced over to a terminal and patched in his comms to their system. "This is coyote, Dane you read?" Castide replied

"Loud and clear Cas. Aggy gave me the gist of what you're planning, and I can get you in without ringing any dinner bells." Dane's voice came over the radio.

"Sounds like there's a _but_ in there." Cayde said.

"Several of 'em." Dane said without missing a beat. "Seems like big red got wind of our little gambit. Had to close up shop on our exfil point, which is where you need to be if you want in."

"Diversion." Castide and Zavala said near simultaneously. "I'll take care of that." Castide continued pulling up a map of the city and surrounding areas. "My last flyby showed they had outposts at most of the city gates, and they already had anti-air batteries installed at various points."

"So, we need to come in low, no ships." Zavala mentioned.

"How did you manage a recon flyby without getting popped?" Cayde asked Castide.

"Focus Cayde." Ikora interrupted. "Dane, where's our point of ingress?" She asked.

"Bout a click out from western wall, sending the way point now." He replied.

"I've got a safehouse near there, use that as your staging area, take sparrows in when my diversion draws back Dane's troubles…" Castide started.

"And I'll roll out the welcome mat." Dane finished.

"Any chance you'll join us on the assault Castide?" Zavala asked.

"And leave you behind enemy lines as all hell breaks loose? No. Brex and I will take out the outposts one by one, you keep your attention forward. I'll let you hash out the details with Dane." He held out his arm and Zavala took it. "I've got to see a guy about some armor." They shook and Castide moved past the titan towards Ikora. "A word if you have a moment."

"Of course, Cas." Ikora replied and followed him out.

Cayde watched them leave the room and turned to Brexley. "So, where'd you get that gun?"

"Brex and I have got our light back from the shard." Castide started when they were out of ear shot.

"I've heard, a few other guardians have as well." Ikora said.

"Well they and Brexley's experiences were much more climactic than mine." He said handing her a data-scroll. "This is Krethlynn's data for the week I was out of commission. Other than a complete black out, I only remember two things, a sensation and a name." Ikora took the scroll turning in her hands before sliding it into her pocket.

"And?" She asked.

"Like wind blowing across my skin, _human_ skin, not what I am now. It was warm but also very dark." He clenched his fist and looked to her worried expression.

"The name?" She asked.

"Sofia." He said feeling an odd calmness swathe over him as he said it. "There's also data in there on what I was able to do that I never dreamed possible, at least my previous grasp on the light."

"Cas, if we survive this… If _I_ survive this…" She paused and regathered her composure. "I'll do anything I can to help. At the very least my shadows will have someone to report to." She said with a wry smile.

"Good luck Ikora." He said.

"Be brave Castide." She said as she embraced him.

Castide strode back into the farmhouse passing Zavala pouring over details about the op with Dane. He nodded to Hawthorne as he approached Cayde grilling Brexley about the Barbarian. He tapped Brexley on the shoulder. "Ready to get new duds?"

"Sure thing." Brexley smiled, swing the rifle back over her shoulder and winking at Cayde.

"Whoa-whoa-whoa, you're not gonna fill me in on Agamemnon? What happened? What'd you find, besides that piece she's toting?" Cayde protested.

"Me, a ketch full of fallen, golden age self-destruct system, no more Agamemnon." Castide replied walking backwards and shrugging. Ikora has the full report." He turned and waved never breaking stride.

"I-Ikora!? But I'm the hunter vanguard, _We're hunters._ " Cayde held his hands out, and slowly placed them on his hips "I thought we were friends!"

"We are!" Castide called back. "That's why I told Ikora first!"

"Ah…" Cayde started and looked at Hawthorne. "Can you believe this?"

"I just met you not too long ago..." She crossed her arms and looked pointedly at Cayde. "So, Yes." She said walking away.

Cayde looked down at the chicken. "You get stuck in one little teleportation loop and everyone loses all respect for ya." He sighed. "C'mon Colonel, let teach you a trick."


	10. Chp-10: Pre-gaming

Chapter 10

Pre-gaming

The vacuum sealed package sailed through the air into Castide's chest as he walked into the barn, thumping heavily into his chest, his right arm snapping up to keep it in place.

"That's for her." Lord Shaxx voiced, standing between two crates. "This…" he handed Castide a long canister "And this…" his massive boot tapping one crate. "Are yours. Things I've been working on since I heard you might show your face a week ago."

"A week ago?" Brexley asked, breaking the seal on the package causing it to double in size with a hiss. "We only received word from the vanguard this morning, A week ago Cas was Rip Van Winkle. How did you know we'd show up?"

"Ikora." Shaxx answered, mirrored simultaneously by Castide's muttering.

Castide pulled a medium length blade from the canister. Full tang with a utilitarian grip, the blade seemed like two pieces fused together. The black spine ran straight until it curved up dramatically into a particularly wicked point while the blade edge, polished and gleaming, was lined with grip-facing grooves creating a vicious serrated effect. He rapped his knuckles against the spine of the blade and it almost seemed to sing as it vibrated.

"From one of the foundries. They call it quickfang." Shaxx said bending down unlatch the bindings on the crate. "Armors in here some vanguard issue, some crucible. Modified to what preferences of yours I recall." He said, shoving the crate towards Castide with his boot. "How are things on your end Miss Shaan? We didn't get to take much in our escape…" He turned to look at her in time for her remove her old cloak and armor, down to the form-fitting shell all guardians wore beneath their armor.

"…So, I hope it fits." He said turning towards Castide. "No bullshit, that one. Meet me in the basement when you finished. One last gift." Shaxx then called back to Brexley "Holliday just landed a short while ago, she should be able to outfit you with a ship for the coming engagement." He then turned walked out of the barn.

Brexley pulled the cloak over the armored vest and cinched tight the harness, leaving the front of the cloak open for easy access to her gear. She picked up the boots and gaiters and walked over to Castide sitting down on the adjacent crate, sliding on the gaiters then each boot, clasping the latches closed.

"Well at least somebody liked the show." Brexley said leaning back against a support beam.

"What show?" Castide asked, himself busy with fitting and adjusting his new armor. He didn't wear the under-suit most guardians had, the perks of being an exo, just his panel-less _skin_ with its barely perceptible seams accenting the synthetic muscle fibers that mimicked human muscle tissue albeit a little too toned.

Brexley shook her attention away from him and stood. "Kinda like the show I'm getting." She said with little bit of frustration. "I'm going to find Amanda." She picked up her old helmet and tucked it under her arm and strode out of the barn towards the fields.

"Daft." Agama said materializing next to Castide.

"Huh?" Castide asked still fiddling with his new helmet.

"Oblivious." Agama replied

"Is this a bit?" Castide stopped to stare at her.

"I should ask you that" Agama's tendrils snatched the helmet out of his hands and began augmenting it. "Get dressed and go see what goodies Shaxx has for you." She sighed.

Castide shrugged and went about putting on his armor. The chest piece was lighter than it looked but the plating was obviously a higher quality, it would send hive knights swords glancing off and take more than a few slugs before denting. "Spend a few decades away from the city…" He muttered. The arm guards while sleek, where thicker than his normal gauntlets. He rolled up the sleeves of his jacket until they were rolled bands around his biceps, then reattached the elbow brackets that held those vicious blades that made him grin crookedly when he first saw them.

Satisfied that he felt no seizing after throwing a few punches into the air, he pulled on his old cloak completing his kit. He sheathed the Quickfang and was pleasantly surprised when it just snapped to his back, no straps or cinching, it just held there and didn't budge. He quickly loaded up his weapons into their usual places on his harness and started towards the barn's basement.

"Hold up I finished." Agama stopped him, gliding around to him holding the new helmet. Full-faced with visor thinner than his old one, matte black with crimson accents along the streamlined filters and rebreathers, and the single horn on the right side to accommodate the shrapnel he never extracted. He took it and turned it over and gave Agama a contented grin. "You're the best there ever was Aggy." He said, clipping the helmet to his belt

"I don't need you to remind me, but thanks all the same" She replied as they made their way to the barn's basement

Brexley made her way across the field towards a tent surrounded by jump-ships of different makes and in varying degrees of disrepair. She leaned against the gate for a moment glanced back over her shoulder. Krethlynn was playing soccer with some children, badly, while the kryptarch lady cheered them on. She recognized Tyra now, despite her joyful outbursts towards the children and Kreth she looked fatigued. "Not all guardians are kryptarchs, but all kryptarchs are guardians." A saying she overheard warlocks utter when they made a discovery they hadn't, that titans used whenever the kryptarchy validated their usefulness, and Hunters used to calm themselves when the rucksack of engrams turned out to be crap. Her thoughts lingered on if the disconnect from the light was the cause of Tyra's drained countenance, when something caught her eye. An absolute mountain of a man that stopped and watched Castide walk to the other side of the barn. " _Meh."_ She thought to herself. She pushed off the gate and head down to the tent and headed down to where Amanda Holliday set up shop. As she approached she finally saw hey and was about to call out to her when she saw what she was tinkering with.

"That has to be a joke, right?" Brexley exclaimed as she came up on the shipwright, levelling her gaze at the sparrow that looked like two sparrows slammed together and welded under one cowling.

"Nope." Amanda responded standing up and backing away from the machine. "Special order I kit-bashed together some odd years ago before I was called shipwright. Just doing some much-needed maintenance. Ya here for a ship Brex?" she said with grease smeared across her face grinning.

"Yup, running wing with Castide with this upcoming op." Brexley replied, inspecting the ring of ships.

"None of these are going to suit ya, still need work, I got you set up over here." Amanda Holliday waved her along to two ships side by side separated from the rest. An Arcadia class missing the conning mast from its front end, and a phaeton class that has multiple modifications like it was refurbished in the reef.

Brexley whistled at the phaeton. "How much for this one?" she indicated the ship in front of her.

"Sorry Brex, that one has been claimed for a while now, you get the pinto with yours-truly's seal of approval, only thing its missing is the NLS drive, but we can fix that later." Amanda patted the engine cowling of the arcadia. "She'll keep up with that Frankenstein Castide calls home, any day of the week. Since she's missing her mast, I figured we'd strap a big ass gun in place of it. Besides, this is Vanguard commissioned, they're footing the bill, no glimmer from your pockets." Amanda finished beaming with pride.

"What's up with this phaeton then?" Brexley asked, still perplexed about the ships origins.

"That's your wingman's ship kiddo. Castide's old compadre from back in the day scrambled his family back to earth when he saw those red bastards fly by. Didn't anyone tell you?" Amanda asked, a little sheepishly.

"Wingman?" Brexley asked? "Who would…" She started to question Amanda when the clues fell into place. Castide's stories, the large titan traipsing around the barn. "I'm going to go and get acquainted." She said trotting back towards the barn.

"I hope that wasn't supposed to be a surprise." Amanda said to herself, kicking at some grass.

"BIIIG GUN!" Brexley called back spinning to walk backwards holding up her arms wide above her head. "BIIIIG!" She emphasized before turning towards her destination.

"Biiig gun huh?" Amanda said to herself hands on hips, overlooking the sparse ammo dump. Her eyes fell upon a large sheet covered machine, its seven barrels peeking beneath the covering and the pair of boots belonging to one of her charges beneath it. "Back to work Vir!" Amanda yelled kicking at the boots. "Naptime is over, get that relic onto that other relic and quit nappin' on the job." She said, whipping off the canvassing. "We sortie in two hours and the lady wants a big gun. I'm gonna make sure she gets it."

Castide entered the basement, his vision immediately adjusting to the miniscule amount of light filtering in through the entrance. Pallowa, close on his heels had a little more trouble, stopping for a split second to allow his vision to adjust. They followed a faint glow emanating from down the hallway. They entered a small room to find Shaxx waiting patiently.

"It's not what you think it is, all those went up with the tower's vault." Shaxx said pulling a rather large container and setting it at Castide's feet.

Castide looked over the large black crate, lined with silver and accented with wolf heads at each corner and as a latch in the middle. "Still have mine, safe and sound far away from here." He leaned against the shelving as he gazed at the box. "Irrit's armor was used to make mine after all."

Shaxx mirrored Castide's stance and folded his arms. "I'm not happy about losing mementoes of those we lost at the gap, regardless of who owned them. It's a power we will never witness again, unless you pull yours out of mothballs." Shaxx pushed off the shelving causing the entire construction to creak. "But we still have the ammo." If he had a gleam in eye it was lost behind the broken horn helmet he always wore.

Castide finally stepped forward to the crate and released the wolf head latches to reveal layered belts of 30. Caliber ammunition. "Wolf-pack rounds for that maniacal machine on the nose of your ship." Shaxx said, stopping on his way out to clasp both hands on Castide's shoulders. "Remind them… Guardian." He said before leaving the room.

Castide stared down at the belts of ammunition, realizing he would at least need Shaxx's help carrying the massive crate.

"Need some help?" a low and comforting voice said behind him. Castide spun round to look up into a pair glimmering blue eyes framed by braided dirty blonde hair. "I mean, I know you can handle it, I'm just offering."

Castide looked up at his old friend, partner, fellow survivor of twilight gap. "Boros… What the traveler's crap can are you doing here?" Castide asked in wonder.

"I heard you needed help, so here I am!" Boros bellowed.

"Boros…" Castide said calmly.

"Ehh…the vanguard called on all guardians, I can't say no…" Boros replied.

"Borostin Stedson…" Castide said grimly.

Boros sighed. "I can't stand the reef. No breeze, and the sunlight is too consistent, not really the type of place I imagine raising a family."

"Family?" Castide asked flatly.

Borostin seemed to shrink. "Allyiya didn't want to have the children there after she heard my tales…"

"Children?" Castide interrupted with thinly veiled surprise.

"Ah… yeah, twins it seems." Boros shrugged and gave a lop-sided grin.

"Boros my dear…" An Awoken woman stepped into the room dressed in the colors of the Queens guard, tailored to accommodate her extra passengers. "Do us all a favor when you're captured and kill yourself." She finalized crossing her arms over her protruding belly, glaring at Boros.

"Pleasure to meet you Castide" She said turning to him. "I've heard all the tales of the person who pulled my husbands ass out of all those fires, it's nice to finally put a face to the name." Her cordial expression a far cry from the death gaze she gave her partner. "Allyiya Stedson." She introduced herself extending a hand.

Castide took her hand. "Charmed..." He said to her. "Confused…" He said glancing at Boros cock-eyed "But none the less, happy to meet you."

Allyiya looked at Castide with an amused smile. "I'm in your wing for this upcoming endeavor, any issue with that?"

"None besides… Well…" Castide replied gesturing to her stomach.

"They were conceived in the Vestian web, they can handle a few g's if they made it this far." She said lightly patting her bump.

"Fair enough." Castide conceded "A little help?" he requested looking to Boros and patting the crate.

Boros grinned stepping up to the large crate, his massive arms easily clasped on either side, hefting it easily into the air. "Where to?" he asked.

"Just outside on the ridge. Agama is probably finished loading the tridents…" Castide turned to the basement entrance as Brexley rounded the corner. "…And the gangs all here." He said, chuckling at Brexley's look of confusion and amazement at the trio in the room.

"Brexley Shaan." She introduced herself, regaining her composure. "You must be Boros, I've heard stories."

Boros chuckled deeply, the sound resonated around the room. "I remember you Miss. Shaan. Always pouring over old books and data-scrolls with little Krethlynn in that little pub in the south quad." Smiling at her confused expression. "It's okay it you don't recognize me, Baire always said I was too big and quiet enough to be mistaken for furniture. This is my wife, Allyiya." He nodded to the awoken woman.

Brexley nodded to the woman taking in her stern countenance and her near regal posture, she was slightly taken aback at the kindness in her eyes. Her on eyes widened slightly at her stomach.

"You're from the reef?" Brexley asked.

Allyiya shrugged "Let's just say I'm looking for a place to be _from._ " she said with a tight smile.

The four made their way outside towards where Castide's ship was berthed. Brexley and Allyiya stepped up to the rear of the ship while Boros and Castide went to the nose of the craft to load the ammunition. Brexley leaned against the hull and watched the activity around the farm grow with intensity. Munitions being carted with more urgency than when she arrived, orders being shouted louder, sparrows being loaded on to transports. Amanda Holliday waved to her as the arcadia was being taxied out to a staging area the seven barrels of the gun she requested protruded from the nose of the craft, considerably shorter than its stock comm mast. She glanced back at her new compatriots, Castide and Boros filing in the munitions and laughing at old tales.

"Are you worried about what will happen?" Brexley turned to Allyiya, her eyes narrowed. "When you and your children grow old?" Suddenly self-conscious, she looked to her feet. "I-I mean, how does he deal with the fact that he'll far outlive yours and theirs?" She stammered.

Allyiya smiled softly staring out at the scenery of the farm, the shard of the traveler in the distance, the people working together, human, exo, and awoken. "I never thought I'd ever see this." Allyiya gestured to everything in front of her. "A lot of the reef don't or won't care for this. Happy to be in service to the queen. Generations of people with no interest in what they came from, happy to float at arm's length at something so beautiful." Allyiya turned, grasping her wrist, pulling Brexley's hand to her belly. "Feel them?" She asked smiling, as Brexley's expression softened at the kicks coming from within her. "If the price I must pay to feel this joy, is to watch you and them, grow old and die, then so be it. I would pay that price a thousand times, again and again, than to never know it." Allyiya's eyes bored into Brexley's "Those were the words… _His_ words that finally convinced me of many things I didn't want to face."

Allyiya released her grip, but Brexley's hand stayed for a moment longer. A klaxon sounded, and a distant muffled voice announced one hour till sortie. Brexley pulled her hand away.

Brexley craned her head to gaze at Castide crouched at the ammo well of his ship, A flask passing between him and Boros, laughter echoing from the two.

"It could all end by tomorrow." Allyiya sighed, her gaze fixed on the setting sun.

"It will end tomorrow." Brexley snapped her attention from the titan and hunter, back to the pregnant woman. " _We_ will end it." Her emerald eyes cold and sparkling with resolve

Pallowa slept in the cot on the ship after losing interest in the endeavors his partner had in that dusty room. His sister laid on the other half of the bedding, grooming and washing around his ears.

"Aren't they adorable?" Agama exclaimed more than asked. "Its like they never forgot what they were to each other." She said.

"Your turn Agama…" Dex muttered. "…Before the cats die of old age."

"Who invited the sourpuss?" Val asked. The third ghost of the party who's shell glowed with and odd opalescence.

"He may be a buzzkill but he's still part of the team Val." Agama responded turning back to the board set upon a crate.

"Buzzkill? Me?" Dex retorted

"Part of the team? You?" Val responded dripping with sarcasm.

"Just roll the dice please, would you Agama?" Dex sighed with resignation.

"Don't worry Dex, I have faith in you." Agama waggled her tendrils. "Alright, Rolling the dice." She said.


	11. Chp 11 Homecoming Dance

Chapter 11

Homecoming Dance.

"One hour to nightfall. All nonessential personnel relocate to rally point beta. Quartermasters are in full tilt folks, get it while you can and proceed to your designated hawks. Guardians, this is last call." Amanda Holliday's voice echoed from the loudspeakers. Krethlynn watched the multitudes of people moving, their paths intertwining and moving apart. Her attention was brought back to the soft pressure against her thigh. Pallowa leaned against her, chittering at the three jumpships hovering effortlessly above the tree line, despite their rather heavy armament.

"Hush furball." Krethlynn said stroking between the cat's ears. "You can't go on this one."

The bay doors of Castide's ship still yawned wide. She could see him leaning lax against the framing, his armor on, "full kit." As he would say, knitting as if nothing in the world was going on. Krethlynn pulled out her data pad, accessing the radio feature and sent Castide her decision on his request. His figure straightened a little, his hands pausing from their task.

"Fair enough." Was his deadpan reply

Krethlynn patted the large cat on his haunches. "C'mon you two." Eyeing the two contrasting felines. "let's watch from the nose-bleeds."

The trio's attentions snapped to the low steady whine of turbines in the distance, growing into a steady chorus of vengeful screams. The small squadron of hawks rose into the air, in tight choreography they all turned towards the direction of the city, their home, the Traveler. Krethlynn glanced back to Castide only to see the bay doors closing on the figure of Boros's hulking frame. His expression caught her off guard. Determination? Anger? _Un-adulterated glee?_ She sighed as she walked into the farmhouse.

"Operation is a go, all fireteams sound off." Zavala's voice crackled from the comms station.

Among the chorus of responses acknowledging the command, Castide's stood out and brought a smirk to Krethlynn's face, and a small chuckle amongst the operators in the room who knew him.

"Fireteam…" An audible heavy sigh broke his pause. "Foxglove sounding off."

The sounds of booster engines thudded in rapid succession as Hawks and jumpships launched off to their destination, streaking away into the night.

Boros sat loading a brace of shotguns humming low and constant, stowing each shotgun in various holsters strapped around his body. "Foxglove? Your idea, or the brat's?" He asked charging the last of his weaponry before sliding it into the last empty holster.

Castide looked back at Boros with all the guns dangling off him at odd angles. "You look ridiculous." Castide grumbled.

"And you act it friend." Boros's low calm voice chuckled out.

"Andreana grew them, foxgloves." Castide said. "Should have been extinct if it wasn't for one of her finds."

A heavy hand thumped on Castide's shoulder. "A good name then." Boros assured him.

Castide toggled the radio "Fireteam Foxglove, fall into formation and accelerate to attack speed. Command, foxglove is on task."

"Goodluck foxglove. Be brave." Zavala's voice crackled back over the radio.

Castide punched the throttle.

Valus Cr'aug stood on the bridge of his carrier, staring out over landscape ahead of planet irked him, too much green, too much blue, and the inhabitants. His task was made clear from the Consul, find and track those that escaped their occupation of their city.

"Seemed simple enough at the time." Unzita said almost reading his mind.

"Something amiss scout?" Cr'aug growled peering down at the psion.

"Too many things Valus." Unzita replied, looking away. "Too many trails gone cold. If I knew I would be herding infant warbeasts I…" Her sentence cutoff from the communications panel flashing read against their face-plates.

"Report." Cr'aug barked.

"Thumos is being attacked. Unknown elements infiltrated the Orobas Vectura." An operator responded.

"Should we move to assist?" Unzita turned to her Valus.

Cr'aug narrowed his gaze to his lead scout before turning to gaze upon the distant city. "No. If Thumos can't handle it, then we have to be ready." He turned his gaze back to his charges. "Battlestations now, recall all scouting parties, and prep the threshers for launch." He commanded. "Move to forward point kirsk. Enough with hunting these vermin, we'll crush whatever Thumos fails to."

Cr'aug felt the inertia of pull on him as the scenery from the bridge began to shift, bringing them to the far side of the city's perimeter. He let himself swell with pride. This was his moment, his glory. He will be the one to remove the last vestiges preventing the legion from total domination of this system. He growled low in satisfaction at not only victory he's sure to achieve, but also at the coming battle.

Unzita headed out to round up her scouts and prep for whatever the valus had planned. She glanced back as the bridge door closed to Cr'aug's boastful proud form. His confidence was her confidence, and she could help but feel it through him, still… There's that small twinge of discomposure she felt as the large door hissed shut.

The image of the carrier reflected in the lens of the targeting camera as the tops of evergreens blurred past. Castide throttled up and veered back towards the approach pattern his wing was holding, toggling the comms. "Command, your heist riled somebody up. Got 'em to clear the AO. Dane can you confirm?"

Th radio crackled. "Did the trick, top-side visuals show enemy search parties are scrambling back to momma." Dane-7's uniquely lilted voice broadcasted.

"We've finished off-loading at the LZ, en route now." Zavala's voice came through.

"Aye, doors are open, and I got the boys setting up a perimeter just in case some of those grease-suckers forgot their keys. Bring 'em home BBB." Dane replied

Boros suppressed a snigger. "Think Zavala caught that?"

Castide flipped of the microphone. "I wouldn't doubt it, but it'll take him some time to exclude all words that aren't, bald, blue, and bastard." He said dryly and keyed back into the channel. "Foxglove has visual on site of ingress, confirming of enemy elements to be regrouping to carrier. Initiating diversion, fireteam foxglove switch to secure channel and disengage stealth on my mark. Good luck ground team."

"Good luck foxglove." Zavala voice crackled back.

"Twist the knife once for me will ya?" Dane crowed.

"Castide out." He called back and switched channels

The three ships camouflage dissipated as they accelerated, their engines rose from the dull whine of cruising speed, to the deafening angry roar of fully opened throttles. They came in low under the crest of the city walls, treetops wicking at each fuselage's underbelly. Castide flipped four toggles as the western gates started roll into view, two anti-air batteries slowly turning to bare their fangs at them. _Not gonna happen._

"Fire at will." He called over the comms.

4 Trident missiles detached from each of the three craft, their own engines sparking and screaming to life, each scrambling to their fiery conclusion with a hungry eagerness. Castide banked and slowed, dropping altitude to a scant few meters above the ground. Boros stepped back towards the rear door of the ship and knelt.

Brexley tilted her wing at Allyiya's phaeton which tilted back in return, the hum of the gun's spinning barrels echoing throughout her cockpit, as they chased after the erratic trails of their combined payload. The missiles broke apart before impacting the ground, turning the outpost in front of the city gate into wall of fire, igniting cabal ammo dumps, sending bodies burning into the air. The anti-air turrets salvos erupting before they had a chance to fly. Brexley was expressionless as she squeezed the trigger for the massive antique gun slapped onto the nose of her arcadia.

Boros spun on his knee facing towards where Castide piloted, gripping the frame on either side of him. Castide looked back into his friend's helmet which was oddly like his own, instead of the sneering carving, Boros's mimicked some fanged roaring beast closing for the killing blow. Boros nodded and Castide punched a control, the bay doors to his ship snapped open, sending a shock through the cabin with the change of air pressure.

Boros didn't even flinch.

Castide held up three fingers.

Boros wrapped his arms about his chest.

Two fingers.

He rocked back into a low flat-footed crouch.

One finger.

Boros stepped backwards into the abyss.

Bracus Tl'Lur held his scorched arm as he surveyed the destruction around him. His charges in his command were either deliriously shambling around, gathering their weapons in a sad attempt to regroup. This was new to him, the chronometer inside his helmet showed it was only a few seconds from when he was searching for the source of the escalating screeching wail, and even less from when the ground erupted around him. He felt as he had woken up from hibernation, asleep for months. He looked down to his arm to see most of it missing, where his armor fell away and brought his skin with it, was just charred flesh, embers still sizzling. Something slammed into him causing the soil of this damned planet to rise up to meet his face once again. Only at the tap of something metaling against his helmet did he look to the cause of his fall. A snarling demon with bared fangs, the surrounding flames reflected at him in the visage. _"So you finally Came for me."_ Was all he could mutter.

Boros Fired into the cabal that he fell on. "Lucky!" He roared. He continued on kicking a scrambling psion into air, levelling his gun at the hapless airborne thing, and squeezing a round off.

"Headed to strafe the southern outpost, let me know when you're done mopping up." Castide radioed to him.

"Only twelve or so left. Bah!" Boros exclaimed as a legionnaire managed to get few rounds off that merely spattered against his insanely thick armor. "Pick me up on your way for the north run." He said casually firing both shotguns simultaneously into the offending cabal.

Castide circled once and back into formation with Brexley and Allyiya as Boros continued his rampage on the shattered warriors.

"Almost doesn't seem fair." Brexley mentioned absently as they swung away towards the south.

"It's not." Allyiya and Castide shot back in unison.

Castide flipped a switch and two projectiles launched off the back of his ship. They arced into the air and deployed three spinning blades a piece, spinning to slow their decent. The end caps popping off revealing a camera lens that spun wildly before being destroyed by small arms fire.

"Recon report coming in Cas." Agama said. "Looks like they know where we're headed reinforcements are moving to the southern gate…"

"And?" Allyiya prodded.

"Hold your butt, I'm correlating image data from two different panoramic images, taken mere nanoseconds apart to predict the movement of several hundred objects ranging in size from the size of a psion to the size of a…" Agama paused. "Yup, pretty sure that carrier is turning around."

"Shit!" Allyiya spat.

"So, are we scrubbing this? Or continuing on?" Brexley asked, to no response. "Cas!"

"What's the call Castide?" Allyiya demanded.

"Ladies." Boros's voice interrupted by his shotgun blasts "If he's gone _*BOOM*_ quiet. Ach! Ya little bastard! _*BOOM BOOM BOOM*_ Then there's a new plan." _*BOOM*_

"Keep to the original plan for now. Aggy, boot up the dogfight protocol upload it to Brex's ship, Ally after we raze the north gate move to the outer perimeter of the city, converge back to our ships on my call. Boros, get ready for a pick-up." Castide said calmly.

"Oh dear." Agama muttered.

Brexley inhaled sharply letting it out long and slow.

"Well, this sounds fun." Allyiya said arming her last two trident missiles.

All that could be heard from Boros was a low steady chuckle.

Valus Cr'aug was bellowing orders among curses, and curses among orders. He knew exactly what happened, he knew exactly how he was duped. He saw not only smoke rising from two of his outposts, along with smaller columns billowing from several points within the city as well. His pride was gone, but he refused to feel shame. He stared at Ghaul's command ship with contempt. He let this happen at his feet, so he can deal with those consequences. Valus Cr'aug will fix his mistake, and when Ghaul requires it, he will fix that as well.

"Launch all threshers!" He screamed.

Unzita stood next to her valus, she could feel the rage emanating off him, the stung pride, the shame he was trying to bury. She could feel it now, that trepidation she felt that was smothered by his confidence. Only now it was something else entirely, dread. She looked from the scanners read outs and could barely make out the three fast moving silhouettes skirting the wall of the city.

She reached out mentally to sense what she could from them. Surprise, exasperation, determination, and most of all, malice. She was shaking, she looked out to see the third plume of smoke beginning to rise from the northern edge of the city, and for the first time since she had joined the legion, she felt alone.

"We're taking that carrier." Castide stated.

"Good!" Boros exclaimed. He was covered in soot, grease, and ash. Several dents and score marks from cabal weaponry littered his armor. "I've been waiting to see one of those thing in flames."

"No, Bor. I mean we're _Taking_ It." Castide specified.

Boros's arms dropped. "You're insane Cas." His face obscured by the helm, but his body language clearly incredulous. "They've got a small army in there!"

"You're a small army yourself you know." Castide reasoned.

"I've lost my light Cas!" he said.

"Then stand behind me." Cas shot back.

"At least my dick will be safe." Boros sighed with resignation.

Castide, Agama, and Val all turned to look flatly at him.

"You're impressive dear, but not _that_ impressive." Allyiya's voice chided over the comms.

"Val…" Boros pleaded.

"Nuh-uh." She said blankly.

"Uhh. Incoming!?" Brexley shouted over comms.

Several threshers shot out over the city wall and swooped down to intercept them head-on.

"Break through them! Keep moving and spiral in to the carrier, take out what you can but keep to the trajectory. Ally on my call!" Castide yelled as his targeting system lit up.

The first two threshers met with Castide's rounds punching through their hulls, a heartbeat later they exploded from several points as the wolfpack rounds shot off from the central explosion and detonated. The third thresher looked as if it was being dismantled to the rapid staccato of Brexley's gun. The scene repeated on their path to the carrier for every thresher unlucky enough to fly into their path, their companions unable to engage due to the jumpships superior speed.

"Somethings happening on that command ship." Allyiya said.

Castide rolled to see obvious sign of a firefight underway on top of the command ship. "Alright let's finish up on our end of the bargain! Ally now!" Castide flipped some controls and launched his last trident at the carrier ahead. "Brex, activate that protocol and get ready for tansmat."

"Here we go!" Boros called out.

The trident slam into the side of the carrier and exploded, opening a breach in the hull. His Minerva and Brexley's arcadia dipped a little and shot up over the carrier, threshers following shortly after. The three of them materialized guns at the ready, mowing down any cabal not taken out by the blast. After the corridor they found themselves in was clear they headed forward covering left and right for every alcove and opening they came upon. Castide spied a console and sprinted forward ducking down and covering his front while Boros and Brexley brought up the rear.

"Aggy if you please." He asked.

"On it Cas." Agama appeared from beneath his cloak and moved to interface with the ships systems. "Got a map, the bridge is up one level and forward, all alarms indicate hull damage and nothing else." She spun to face the trio. "They don't know they have company on board."

"Let's keep it that way." He said as he twisted off the compensator of the third ring and replacing it with a suppressor. Boros followed suit by stowing his shotguns and procuring two sidearms, comically tiny in his massive paws. Brexley slung the barbarian across her back, brandishing her sidearm in one hand and her kukri in the other. Wordlessly they moved as one down the way towards the bridge.

Cr'aug stumbled but caught himself as his ship rocked from the explosion. "Damage report!" He growled. Two ships. Two puny ships punched through his fleet and was able land a blow on him. It was preposterous to think let alone admit. "Track those ships! Activate defenses!"

"They're moving away valus, engaging the threshers outside our range." Unzita said.

Valus Cr'aug laughed despite himself. "Probably the last option they had, and they squandered it!" He chortled out.

Unzita felt it again, cold calculated, closer this time. "Valus." She warned. "I believe they're on board."

He spun to meet gaze. She felt his rage welling up within him. Not one to dismiss Unzita so easily, he collected himself. "Where." He asked low and cold.

Unzita turned back to her station and initiated a scan. "On their way here. I'll sound the alarm and call reinforce…"

"No!" He shouted. "Let them come, let them think they were undetected, we ambush them here." He ordered, unsheathing and igniting his severi.

"Here!" Agama whispered.

The trio moved into position to breach the door, Brexley on right, Boros on left, Castide in center. Castide holstered the third ring and procured two grenades and ducked beside the center line of the door. "Open it just enough Aggy."

Agama nodded and interface with the door controls. Castide feed arc energy into on grenade and solar in to the other, activated them and nodded to Agama. The door hissed apart several inches and Castide rolled both grenades through the opening.

"Now!" Castide called out after concussion sounded off in the room. The doors snapped open and a massive arm came swinging out of the haze of the explosives with a roar. It caught Castide in the chest, sending him flying into bulkheads on the other side of the corridor. Valus Cr'aug came charging through the opening, severi arcing down to the spot Castide came to rest. With a quickness rarely seen from one his size, Boros leaped into the path stopping each blade with the muzzles of he shotguns. Gr'aug Roared into Boros's face. Boros responded with two trigger pulls, each with a roar of their own that shattered the valus's weapons, causing a blast that stunned them both.

Brexley shot into the entry way in the bind spot of the hulking cabal leader, driving her blade deep into his hamstring, and firing into the last remaining occupants of the bridge. She turned and dove away from Cr'aug's sweeping hand. He lunged and caught her by the leg, lifting her up and slamming her back into the ground, pinning her there. Cr'aug bellowed once more, back-handing Boros, sending him tumbling away.

Valus Cr'aug laughed as he held her down. "Just three of you!?" he jeered. "I have slain legions!" He reached out and took up a jagged shard of his severus and brought it to Brexley's neck. She looked to Castide, unmoving and crumpled against the wall. She looked to Boros, struggling to stand.

"I will keep the big one, it may entertain me later." Valus Cr'aug hissed as he raised the blade above his head.

Unzita felt it so clearly it roused her from her stupor. Dazed she looked around the room at her dead or dying comrades. She crawled enough to see her valus kneeling over two of the intruders. She felt it more strongly, she tried to call out.

Calm, collected.

The valus raised his arm a shard in his grip.

Confidence.

The valus roared and she called out, her voice came as a rasp.

 _Malice._

It all happened so slowly. A sharp crack echoed throughout the bridge bringing with it a stench of burning ozone. Three streaks of yellow hot light streaked up through Cr'augs arm, dissolving it entirely into embers, then to ash fluttering to the floor. The air seemed Ionize at that time, sending an uncomfortable feeling across her skin. Small arcs of electricity seemed to crawl over her valus building in intensity, causing him to scream and twitch in pain. A roar was his final moment, not his, but anothers. She heard it through her valus, she felt the pain through her valus, she felt the burning loss of his arm through him. Their connection was now the strongest its ever been, cause now she can truly see what the Valus sees. The charging giant, the bared fangs of a demon. She felt the bite of his own weapon on his neck, and then her connection was lost. She felt only herself and her own fear.

Castide took his helmet off and tossed it aside. He dragged himself to Brexley's prone form and reached to unlatch her helmet, carefully pulling off her.

"Brex." He whispered. "Need a revive?"

Her eyes opened, and she regarded him. "I'm fine. Thanks for asking."

He reached out and ran hand across her cheek, brought her close and tapped his forehead lightly against hers. "Good." He said. He rolled over and propped himself up looking to Boros. "Heeey. You survived."

Boros removed his helmet and set it to the side, his gaze still on the severed head of Valus Cr'aug. "This guy…" Boros started pointing to the head. "Is such an asshole. Did you hear the things he said?"

"Somethings happening." Brexley said, sitting up and gesturing to the bridge.

The three scrambled to their feet and moved towards the bridge window

"The traveler!" Agama said, materializing next to Castide

"Where were you three?" Boros asked his ghost

"Board games." Val replied flatly.

"She's lying. We were with you." Dex Assured Brexley.

"Eyes front people." Agama said.

An effigy of light hovered in the air before the traveler. Whatever it was saying was muted from inside the ship, but not what held the six enraptured. The shell on the traveler began to fragment. Rays of light began to pierce through it and the figure before it, increasingly so to the point it seemed the traveler exploded. A shockwave of light that washed over them and passing on past them.

Tears welled up in Brexley's eyes. "It's awake."

"Uh Val?" Boros muttered, inspecting himself.

"OOOOH YEAH! Were back baby!" Val buzzed around her guardian.

Castide's grin dropped when he heard it. "No longer broken, no longer halved. Although it's touch cannot erase mine. Do what you will with our gifts." The chorus of voices rang in his head.

"Did you hear that?" Agama whispered to him.

Castide nodded and opened his mouth to speak when the radio crackled. "What the hell was that!?" Allyiya asked "Did we lose? Tell me that means we didn't lose."

"Bring the ships in love." Boros radioed back. "Just a little clean-up, then we celebrate." He said walking towards the hangars cocking his shotgun.

Brexley paused before the collapsed and shivering psion, briefly glancing back to the corpse of the valus, then back to the psion. "Kreth was right about being interesting with you." She tapped the fetal form with her boot, intensifying the shivering. "Tough break." She said before joining Castide.

The two both stood forward of the command console, both gazing at the traveler. "Thanks for the save." Softly shouldering him.

"Meh. You had him." He pulled out a flask regarded the dents in it. "I just wanted payback for getting slammed against the wall." He said unscrewing the cap.

Brexley raised an eyebrow at him snatched the flask, taking a swig. "That's all it takes?" she spun and placed her free hand on his shoulder, pushing him against the command console with a enough force to elicit a grunt. "I'll be waiting for my payback." She said, handing the flask back.

Castide watched her retrieve her helmet and saunter after Boros before gathering his own equipment. "I'm surprised you didn't shoot her in the arm." Agama said, the third ring wrapped in her appendages.

"I'm not oblivious enough to think she wanted me to shoot her Aggy." He responded taking the hand cannon and checking its load. "Despite what you and Kreth think."

"I never said or thought you were." She wrapped her tendrils around his arm and held as he walked. "You're just bashful."

Castide walked through the half-broken door of The Tilted Ghost, a bar in the southern quadrant of the city, carrying a crate in his arms and a bulky satchel over his shoulder.

"Were closed! Ya damn blind or illiterate!?" the barkeep shouted over his shoulder, sorting through broken and intact bottles.

Castide shifted the crate, the clinking sound of its contents only slightly muffled. "Thought you could use some new stock, ya rusty old bastard."

The exo barkeep paused and began turning around pushing a sleeve up his arm. "I'll show you rusty you cocky piece of…" His irritated expression dropped when saw Castide step into better light. "Great balls of the great ball Cas, who the hell re-authorized you city access?"

"No one. The door…" Castide looked back at the dilapidated entryway. "Was open." He finished with a smirk.

"You just earned some carpentry work with that one." Baire-12 walked up to Castide taking the crate from his hands. "C'mon in. Drop that ruck by the bar and get yourself situated." Baire set the crate on the bar as Castide brushed some rubble of a stool. "So, what'll you have? Luckily, we didn't lose power in all this nonsense, so at least the beer is still cold." Baire asked, sliding back behind the bar.

"Just one for now." Castide said pulling a bottle from the crate, glowing amber as the light hit it. He spun the bottle around so the faded label face Baire. "I have some people coming over."

Baire saw the faded green smudge and the intact foil seal on the bottle and look as if he could cry. "Bonnie! Bring out nice glasses if they survived!" A ghost with intricate filigree on its shell appeared from the back room.

"I'm still taking inventory of what we… Cas! Oh, I'm so glad you made it through this mess, not that I'm surprised, I just didn't think you would concern yourself with this..."

"Bonnie." Baire interrupted, softly chuckling.

"Oh yes. I'll be right back." Bonnie replied swinging off into the back room

"Well?" Baire started. "What have you got up your sleeve this time?" the old exo, finally smiling, prodded.

"Just some old-fashioned celebrating. Plus, I have a deal to make." Castide explained. "Is my booth still in good shape?"

Baire looked back just beyond the bar at a booth that still had a reserved sign hanging on it. "Yup, just like you, seems to be the only thing that went through this shit without a scratch." Baire grinned as Bonnie came swooping back into the bar with two tumblers hovering below her. Baire uncorked the bottle and poured two fingers in each glass. "What're we drinking to?" He asked.

Castide held is glass a moment lost in the liquid rolling around. "New horizons, friends old and new, and ancient secrets."

They clinked their glasses and knocked the bottoms on the bar before sipping.

A few hours later the bar was in full swing, Boros and Allyiya conversing with Brexley and Krethlynn. A few guardians mingling with city workers looking for refreshment after a hard few weeks of dismantling cabal installations and relocating errant refugees. Agama, Dex, Val, and Bonnie all huddled over pieces of cardboard and plastic. Castide sat in a booth far in the back of the bar, two drinks in front of him, his hand clasped around one.

"All my time coming here and finally I know who that booth was reserved for." Brexley pointed to where Castide sat. "What's the dirt?" She spun round to Boros and Krethlynn.

"All I know is that's where my father and mother used to drink with Cas after patrols." Krethlynn said, taking a long drink of her beer.

"Your parents were both guardians?" Brexley asked, astonished.

"Yup. Cas used to watch me when they had dates." She said knocking back the last of her drink. "Baire! 'Nother one please!" She called out, walking to the bar.

"We lost Dagen on the moon." Boros said solemnly. "Her father. Andreanna, Dagen, Cas, and I used to work together up until Cas clocked Zavala." He explained chuckling at the thought. "Andreanna and I were out of contact range when it happened. Cas was dealing with Hearthwall when that happened. So Dagen went in our stead. Only Bonnie came back." He said gesturing towards the huddled ghosts.

"Uh… So, Bonnie isn't Baire's ghost?" Brexley asked.

"No." Boros said a little too soberly. "Felt like Dagen's death was her fault. Wandered the moon until Cas found her and brought her back." Boros took a deep drink of his beer and continued. "Couldn't bring herself to find a new guardian so she ended up helping out old Baire…" Boros paused for a moment, looking back and forth oddly before leaning in close to Brexley. "Cas and I think Kreth has the gift, Bonnie sees it, but won't be her ghost cause of the guilt she feels."

Brexley looked to Krethlynn's banter with Baire for a moment before looking to her own drink. She finished it off with a deep drink and was headed back to the bar when she noticed Amanda Holliday weaving through the crowd in a bee-line straight to Castide's booth. " _Odd._ " She thought to herself before joining her friend at the bar.

Amanda landed heavily into the booth, causing the liquid in the two glasses to slosh around. "Alright Cas, I've got more on my plate than you have room on this table so lay it on me quick." She spat out.

"I've got one of their carriers." He said taking up his glass and sipping from it. "I need an overhaul."

Amanda stared at him in disbelief. "No, you don't, and I know you don't have the glimmer to even joke about it, so why don't you ask me what you really want," She said, her eyes smiling

Castide slid a piece of paper over to her. She opened it and laughed. "Cas, this is an address in the city, not an amount." She looked at him with contempt.

"Dane is on board." He said looking at the dim light refracting through his glass. "And you, of all people should know that any address of mine holds more worth than anyone can write on a scrap of paper." He said holding her gaze with his.

Amanda froze and narrowed her eyes at him. "You're serious about this?"

"Deadly." He replied.

"Deal." She said picking up her glass. "What are you going to do with a cabal carrier?"

"Whatever I want really." He replied.

They thrust each other's glasses together and drank.

Authors note: No Particular Trouble will be going on hiatus due to the next arc dealing heavily on warmind and their connection to the exos and the upcoming Warmind expansion. Since I'm trying to keep the story "in the seams" of the original destiny story, I will most likely have to rewrite everything I have to fit into the ever-expanding lore and immediate history.

Thank you for reading, _Rocketrow._


End file.
